It Must Be Regarded As Forming One Very Large One; Or
Rather, From Its Immense Size, A Species Of Continent" (Kerr 18 462).)
That part of the southern coast of Australia lying between Cape Leeuwin
and Fowler Bay, in the Bight, had been
Explored prior to Flinders' time,
partly by Captain George Vancouver, one of Cook's men, in 1791, and
partly in 1792 by the French commander, Bruni Dentrecasteaux, who was
despatched in search of the gallant La Perouse - "vanished trackless into
blue immensity."* (* Carlyle, French Revolution book 2 cap 5.) Flinders
carefully revised what they had done, commencing his elaborate,
independent survey immediately after the Investigator made the Leeuwin,
on December 6, 1801. He had therefore been just four months in this
region, when he left his anchorage at Kangaroo Island - four months of
incessant daily and nightly labour diligently directed to the task in
hand. Always generous in his praise of good work, he paid a warm tribute
to the quality of the charts prepared by Beautemps Beaupre, "geographical
engineer" of La Recherche, Dentrecasteaux's corvette. "Perhaps no chart
of a coast so little known as this is, will bear a comparison with its
original better than this of M. Beaupre," he said; and though he put
forward his own as being fuller in detail and more accurate, he was
careful to point out that he made no claim for superior workmanship, and
that, indeed, he would have been open to reproach if, after having
followed the coast with Beaupre's chart in hand, he had not effected
improvements where circumstances did not permit his predecessor to make
so close an examination. It is an attractive characteristic of Flinders,
that he never missed an opportunity of appreciating valuable service in
other navigators.
But from the time when the Investigator passed the head of the Bight, the
whole of the coast-line traversed was virginal to geographical science.
With a clean sheet of paper, Flinders began to chart a new stretch of the
earth's outline, and to link up the undiscovered with the known portions
of the great southern continent. Our interest in his work is intensified
by the reflection that of all the coasts of the habitable earth, this was
the last important portion still to be discovered. True it is that
research in the arctic and antarctic circles remained to be pursued, and
still remains. Man will not cease his efforts till he knows his planet in
its entirety, though the price of the knowledge may be high. But when he
has compassed the extreme ends of the globe, he will not have found a
rood of ground upon which any one will ever wish to live. The earth lust
of the nations is not provoked by thoughts of the two poles. Ruling out
the frozen regions, therefore, as places where discovery is pursued
without thought of future habitation, it is a striking fact that this
voyage of Flinders opened up the ultimate belt of the earth's contour
hitherto unknown. The continents were finally unveiled when he concluded
his labours. Europe, the centre of direction, had comprehended the form
of Asia, had encircled Africa, had brought America within ken and
control. It had gradually pieced together a knowledge of Australia, all
but the extensive area the greater part of which it was left for Flinders
to reveal. The era of important modern coastal discovery within habitable
regions, which commenced with the researches directed by Prince Henry the
Navigator from 1426 to 1460, and attained to brilliancy with Columbus in
1492 and Vasco da Gama in 1497, ended with Flinders in 1802 and 1803. He
ranges worthily with that illustrious company of "men full of activity,
stirrers abroad, and searchers of the remote parts of the world," of whom
Richard Hakluyt speaks, and is outshone by none of them in the
faithfulness with which his work was done, and in all the qualities that
make up the man of high capacity and character entrusted with a great
enterprise.
When Flinders was appointed to the command of the Investigator, he was
only twenty-seven years of age. But he had already won distinction by his
demonstration that Bass Strait was a strait, and not a gulf, a fact not
proved by George Bass's famous voyage from Sydney to Westernport in a
whale-boat. His circumnavigation of Tasmania - then called Van Diemen's
Land - in the Norfolk; the discovery of the Tamar estuary and Port
Dalrymple; some excellent nautical surveying among the islands to the
north-west of Tasmania; and an expedition along the Queensland coast, had
also earned for him the confidence of his official superiors. His ardour
for discovery, and the exact, scientific character of his charts and
observations, won him a powerful and steadfast friend in Sir Joseph
Banks, who had been with Cook in the Endeavour in 1768 to 1771, and never
lost his interest in Australian exploration. At the beginning of his
naval career Flinders had tasted the "delights of battle." As a
midshipman on the Bellerophon (Captain Pasley), he played his small part
on the "glorious first of June" (1794), when "Black Dick," Lord Howe, won
his greatly vaunted victory over the French off Brest.
But before this event his tastes and aspirations had set in the direction
of another branch of the naval service. A voyage to the South Seas and
the West Indies under Bligh, in the Providence, in 1791, had revealed to
his imagination the glory of discovery and the vastness and beauty of the
world beyond European horizons. The fame and achievements of Cook were
still fresh and wonderful in the mouths of all who followed the sea.
Bligh, a superb sailor - not even the enemies whom he made by his rough
tongue and brusque manner denied that - taught him to be a scientific
navigator; and when he threaded the narrow, coral-walled waters of Torres
Strait, he knew that to the southward were coasts as yet unmarked on any
chart, seas as yet unploughed by any keel.
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