It Was His Invariable Practice, We Also Read,
To Provision Boats Engaged On Any Special Service For The Bare Time
That
he meant them to be absent; so many ounces of food and so many pints of
water per man
Per day, and no more, leaving no margin for accidents,
allowing of no excuse for unavoidable delay. A sensible person would not
provide for a picnic on such principles.
The exploration of the west and north-west coasts was continued till the
end of April, when Baudin decided to go once more to Timor. His intention
was, after refreshing his men and taking in supplies at the Dutch
settlement, to spend some time in the Gulf of Carpentaria and along the
southern shores of New Guinea. On May 6, Kupang harbour was entered for
the second time. There it was learnt that Flinders had called at the port
in the Investigator in April, after having concluded his exploration of
the northern gulf. He had been compelled to relinquish his work owing to
the rotten condition of his ship's timbers, and had sailed back to Port
Jackson. As he had reached the Gulf of Carpentaria by sailing up the
eastern side of the continent, and returned through Torres Strait down
the western coast, and through Bass Strait on the south, Flinders was the
first sailor to accomplish the circumnavigation of Australia, as he had
also been the first to circumnavigate Tasmania.* (* Tasman, in 1642,
sailed from Batavia, in Java, thence to Mauritius, Tasmania, New Zealand,
the Friendly Islands, northern New Guinea, and back to Batavia.
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