Australia Twice Traversed | Page 4

older land, and he took possession of the whole in the name of George III as England's territory.
Cook reported so favourably of the regions he had discovered that the British Government decided to establish a colony there; the spot finally selected was at Port Jackson, and the settlement was called Sydney in 1788. After Cook came the Frenchman Du Fresne and his unfortunate countryman, La Perouse. Then Vancouver, Blyth, and the French General and Admiral, D'Entre-Casteaux, who went in search of the missing La Perouse. In 1826, Captain Dillon, an English navigator, found the stranded remains of La Perouse's ships at two of the Charlotte Islands group. We now come to another great English navigator, Matthew Flinders, who was the first to circumnavigate Australia; to him belongs the honour of having given to this great island continent the name it now bears. In 1798, Flinders and Bass, sailing in an open boat from Sydney, discovered that Australia and Van Diemen's Land were separate; the dividing straits between were then named after Bass. In 1802, during his second voyage in the Investigator, a vessel about the size of a modern ship's launch, Flinders had with him as a midshipman John Franklin, afterwards the celebrated Arctic navigator. On his return to England, Flinders, touching at the Isle of France, was made prisoner by the French governor and detained for nearly seven years, during which time a French navigator Nicolas Baudin, with whom came Perron and Lacepede the naturalists, and whom Flinders had met at a part of the southern coast which he called Encounter Bay in reference to that meeting, claimed and reaped the honour and reward of a great portion of the unfortunate prisoner's work. Alas for human hopes and aspirations, this gallant sailor died before his merits could be acknowledged or rewarded, and I believe one or two of his sisters were, until very lately, living in the very poorest circumstances.
The name of Flinders is, however, held in greater veneration than any of his predecessors or successors, for no part of the Australian coast was unvisited by him. Rivers, mountain ranges, parks, districts, counties, and electoral divisions, have all been named after him; and, indeed, I may say the same of Cook; but, his work being mostly confined to the eastern coast, the more western colonies are not so intimately connected with his name, although an Australian poet has called him the Columbus of our shore.
After Flinders and Baudin came another Frenchman, De Freycinet, bound on a tour of discovery all over the world.
Australia's next navigator was Captain, subsequently Admiral, Philip Parker King, who carried out four separate voyages of discovery, mostly upon the northern coasts. At three places upon which King favourably reported, namely Camden Harbour on the north-west coast, Port Essington in Arnhem's Land, and Port Cockburn in Apsley Straits, between Melville and Bathurst Islands on the north coast, military and penal settlements were established, but from want of further emigration these were abandoned. King completed a great amount of marine surveying on these voyages, which occurred between the years 1813 and 1822.
Captain Wickham in the Beagle comes next; he discovered the Fitzroy River, which he found emptied itself into a gulf named King's Sound. In consequence of ill-health Captain Wickham, after but a short sojourn on these shores, resigned his command, and Lieutenant Lort Stokes, who had sailed with him in the Beagle round the rocky shores of Magellan's Straits and Tierra del Fuego, received the command from the Lords of the Admiralty. Captain Lort Stokes may be considered the last, but by no means the least, of the Australian navigators. On one occasion he was speared by natives of what he justly called Treachery Bay, near the mouth of the Victoria River in Northern Australia, discovered by him. His voyages occurred between the years 1839 and 1843. He discovered the mouths of most of the rivers that fall into the Gulf of Carpentaria, besides many harbours, bays, estuaries, and other geographical features upon the North Australian coasts.
The early navigators had to encounter much difficulty and many dangers in their task of making surveys from the rough achievements of the Dutch, down to the more finished work of Flinders, King and Stokes. It is to be remembered that they came neither for pleasure nor for rest, but to discover the gulfs, bays, peninsulas, mountains, rivers and harbours, as well as to make acquaintance with the native races, the soils, and animal and vegetable products of the great new land, so as to diffuse the knowledge so gained for the benefit of others who might come after them. In cockle-shells of little ships what dangers did they not encounter from shipwreck on the sunken edges of coral ledges of the new and shallow seas, how many were those