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.

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