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.
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