Australia Twice Traversed | Page 4

but Cook did
not touch upon Australia's coast until two years later, when, voyaging
northwards along the eastern coast, he anchored at a spot he called
Botany Bay, from the brightness and abundance of the beautiful wild
flowers he found growing there. Here two natives attempted to prevent
his landing, although the boats were manned with forty men. The
natives threw stones and spears at the invaders, but nobody was killed.
At this remote and previously unvisited spot one of the crew named
Forby Sutherland, who had died on board the Endeavour, was buried,
his being the first white man's grave ever dug upon Australia's shore; at
least the first authenticated one--for might not the remaining one of the
two unfortunate convicts left by Pelsart have dug a grave for his
companion who was the first to die, no man remaining to bury the
survivor? Cook's route on this voyage was along the eastern coast from
Cape Howe in south latitude 37 degrees 30' to Cape York in Torres
Straits in latitude 10 degrees 40'. He called the country New South
Wales, from its fancied resemblance to that 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