often changing its object and as often disappointed, was strongly marked in a faithful servant of Captain Flinders, who could not be prevailed upon to leave him when the others were exchanged.

'Despair,' says Captain Flinders, of our being ever set at liberty, had now wholly taken possession of his senses. He imagined that all the inhabitants of the island, even those who were most friendly, were leagued with the Captain-General against us; the signals on the hills communicated my every step; the political articles in the gazettes related in a metaphorical manner the designs carrying on; the new laws at that time publishing, shewed the punishments we were doomed to suffer; persons seen in conversation; every thing in fine had some connection with this mysterious league; and the dread of some sudden and overwhelming blow left him no peace, either by day or night. This state of mind continued some months, his sleep and appetite had forsaken him, and he wasted daily; and finding no other means of cure than persuading him to return to England, where he might still render me service, a permission for his departure was requested and granted. -vol. ii. p. 458.

Sir Joseph Banks, the President of the Royal Society, with whom indeed the expedition might be said to originate, had applied early to the National Institute, to interfere for the release of Captain Flinders, who had been so unjustly detained. In July, 1804, the Council of State had decided to approve of the conduct of General De Caen, and from a pure sentiment of generosity to grant to Captain Flinders his liberty, and the restitution of his vessel.' In 1806, and not before, this decision was approved by Buonaparte; it was said to have been sent out in triplicate by French vessels; and a quadruplicate was forwarded from England, through Sir Edward Pellew, which was avowedly the first that was received, in July, 1807. This year however passed away, and the following also, but still no release on the contrary, the limits of his parole were abridged.

It is pretty clear, from this conduct of De Caen, that the orders for Captain Flinders's release were either never sent from France, or that they were accompanied by counter-orders to detain him; and the object of this despicable conduct we think we have already rightly conjectured, in our review of M. Peron's book. Captain Flinders seems to entertain the same opinion of the views of Buonaparte, or the Institute in France, but thinks that vindictive or interested motives alone swayed De Caen. In the first instance they unquestionably did; and it was generally supposed in the island that if Captain Flinders had not refused to dine with him, after his ungentlemanlike conduct at their first interview, he would very speedily have been liberated. Having however once made him a prisoner, the next step was to justify what he had done by falsifying facts, and imputing motives that had no existence. His conduct

was

was approved in France, and the following extract may explain why it was.

"The publication of the French voyage of discovery, written by M. Peron, was in great forwardness, and the Emperor Napoleon, considering it to be a national work, had granted a considerable sum to render the publication complete. From a Moniteur of July, 1808, it appeared that French names were given to all my discoveries, and those of Captain Grant, on the south coast of Terra Australis : it was kept out of sight that I had ever been upon the coast; and in speaking of M. Peron's first volume, the newspapers asserted, that no voyage ever made by the English nation could be compared with that of the Géographe and Naturaliste. It may be remembered, that after exploring the south coast up to Kangaroo island, with the two gulphs, I met Captain Baudin, and gave him the first information of those places, and of the advantages they offered him; and it was but an ill return to seek to deprive me of the little honour attending the discovery.'-vol. ii. p. 470.

That his prolonged confinement was a trick to rob him of the merit of his discoveries, we think will admit of little doubt. In M. Peron's first volume (the second never has, and now in all probability never will appear) he claims for his nation the discovery of all the parts between Western-port in Bass's strait, and Nuyts archipelago, to which is given the name of Terre Napoléon. Kangaroo island is converted into l'Ile Decrés; Spencer's gulph is named Golfe Bonaparte; and the Gulph of St. Vincent, Golfe Joséphine; and so on, along the whole coast to Cape Nuyts, not even the smallest island being left without some similar stamp of French discovery; yet the Géographe had but just entered the strait from the eastward, for the first time, when met by the Investigator, after Captain Flinders had explored every part of the coast to the westward, and informed Captain Baudin of his discoveries. He afterwards, at Port Jackson, shewed one of his charts to Captain Baudin, in the presence of M. Peron, when M. Freycinet, his first lieutenant, addressing himself to Captain Flinders, observed,

"Captain, if we had not been kept so long picking up shells and catching butterflies at Van Dieman's land, you would not have discovered the south coast before us."- How then,' asks Captain Flinders,' came M. Peron to advance what was so contrary to truth? Was he a man destitute of all principle? My answer is, that I believe his candour to have been equal to his acknowledged abilities; and that what he wrote was from over-ruling authority, and smote him to the heart; he did not live to finish the second volume.'

No, nor had he lived, could he have brought it out. The reference to charts in the first, which had no existence, made it necessary to produce those charts in the second, and they had none to produce.

'I shewed to Captain Baudin,' says Captain Flinders, one of my charts of the southern coast, containing the part first explored by him, and distinctly marked as his discovery. He made no objection to the justice of the limits therein pointed out; but found his portion to be smaller than he had supposed, not having been before aware of the extent of the discoveries previously made by Captain Grant. After examining the chart, he said, apparently as a reason for not producing any of his own, that his charts were not constructed on board the ship; but that he transmitted to Paris all his bearings and observations, with a regular series of views of the land, and from them the charts were to be made at some future time.'

After this we are not surprized at the dilemma in which poor M. Peron found himself, having referred to charts which had no existence. Luckily for Captain Flinders, though De Caen had robbed him of his log-books, one of which has never yet been returned, he had not the sagacity to secure the charts. It is on this ground we venture to predict, that although the second volume of M. Peron's voyage was sent to the press, it will either never be published, or, if published, will be accompanied with the pillaged copies, perhaps a little altered, of Captain Flinders's charts.

At length, in 1810, Captain Flinders was allowed to quit the island on giving his parole not to act in any service which might be considered as directly or indirectly hostile to France or its allies during the war; and he arrived in England on the 24th of October, 1810, after an absence of nine years and three months.

But the cruel and inhuman treatment of the French Governor of Mauritius had not only ruined his health but was the cause of losing him six years post rank in his Majesty's naval service, a loss and disappointment which could not fail to prey severely on his mind. A regulation of the Admiralty, it seems, forbids any officer from being promoted while a prisoner. Mr. Yorke, then first Lord of the Admiralty, directed that his commission should be dated as near to the date of his liberation as the patent which constituted the Board over which he presided would allow, but more he could not do. He also gave every encouragement to the speedy publication of the voyage, by ordering the charts and embellishments to be executed at the public expense, and a release from parole that had so improperly been exacted from him, was, after three strong remonstrances, obtained in 1812. But the seeds of disease had taken too deep root. By great exertion he completed the narrative, the charts, and the laborious calculations in a manner that does his memory the greatest credit as an able observer, navigator, draftsman, and astronomer. But when the exertion ceased, and the mind had lost its elasticity, the body sunk under the disease which accumulated misfortunes and disappointments had occasioned, and which a brutal and unfeeling slave of a despot had inflicted.

Before

Before we proceed to give some account of the discoveries made by Captain Flinders, we deem it but just to apprize such of our readers as may feel disposed to take up these volumes under an expectation of meeting therein the same degree of interest, which they will recollect to have been excited by the perusal of Captain Cook's discoveries, that they must necessarily be disappointed. We wish to remind them that the discoveries of Captain Cook were those of new worlds. He swept the whole ocean, from its navigable limits in the northeru regions to those eternal fields of ice which surround the southern pole, exploring and describing new and unheard-of countries and nations and people; presenting to the world a grand and bold sketch of new objects, rendered more interesting unquestionably from their novelty and the endless variety of shape and feature under which they appeared, than from any particular accuracy or detail of outline. We would have them bear in mind that the comprehensive picture painted by Captain Cook, which left nothing to future navigators but to fill up the minuter parts, and to add here and there a few touches of light and shade must necessarily have blunted the edge of curiosity, and that we can now only expect the detail of what he had already given to us in the gross.

Those, however, who look for practical and useful information in geographical and nautical science, will not be disappointed in the perusal of Captain Flinders's volumes: they will perceive that to acquire a minute and correct knowledge of the coasts and harbours of Terra Australis, and of the winds and tides and currents of the adjacent seas, was the object nearest to the heart of our unfortunate author, that it engrossed his whole attention, and that he has completely fulfilled that object.

In an introduction of 204 pages, we are presented with a clear and methodical account of the progressive discoveries that have been made on the coasts of Terra Australis, as it was originally named, by the different nations of Europe; and of the several parts of each which yet remained to be explored. On the north, he points out that there was yet wanting a general survey of Torres strait; because if a passage through it, moderately free from danger, could be discovered, it would cut off five or six weeks of the usual route, by the north of New Guinea or the Eastern islands, in the voyage to India or China. The examination of the shores of the great gulph of Carpentaria was also very desirable, as nothing was known of its extent or shape excepting a little on the eastern side and that imperfectly. A more exact investigation of the bays, shoals, islands, and coasts of Arnheim's, and the northern part of Van Dieman's lands, was also desirable. On the west coast, towards the northward of it in particular, nothing had been done since the time of

Dampier,

Dampier, who, contrary to the Dutch charts, laid down De Witt's land as a series of islands, and gave it as his opinion that the northern part of New Holland was separated from the lands to the southward by a strait-the opening that appears had since his time been thought not unlikely to communicate with the gulph of Carpentaria; and some went so far as to deem it probable that a passage might exist from this gulph to the unknown part of the south coast, beyond the isles of St. Francis and St. Peter. This was a question in geography which it was high time should not remain unanswered in the nineteenth century, and Capt. Flinders has accordingly completely settled it by ascertaining that no such strait exists. On the south coast full 250 leagues of land remained wholly unexplored; and it had been supposed that some great river might be found on some part of this coast, issuing from the mediterranean sea which fancy had pictured to occupy the central parts of Terra Australis, or perhaps the opening of the strait which others imagined would be found to divide this land into two or more portions. This was an important point to determine. On the east coast and on Van Dieman's land little remained to be done except the examination of several openings or bights that were seen and named by Captain Cook, but not examined by him-to which, however, may be added, a numerous list of islands of which a few only had been examined, and the vast chain of coral reefs which stretch at a considerable distance from the coast whose limits it was of importance to ascertain. Most of these objects have passed under the investigation of Captain Flinders, and if his ship had not unfortunately failed him, the whole would have been accomplished according to his ardent wish that nothing should be left for the future navigator to discover. It will be obvious that in a work like the present, which is more adapted for the use of professional men than the amusement of the general reader, and a great part of which is more for reference than for reading, we can select but a few detached passages either for instruction or entertainment. With the shores and their inhabitants Captain Flinders had but little communication, and the former are generally so barren and the latter so very low in the scale of humanity, as to afford but a moderate share of interest. Of the natural history, as far as relates to the vegetable kingdom, a concise and perspicuous account is given in the Appendix by Mr. Brown; and of the natives we shall hereafter have occasion to speak in the brief account we have to offer of the state of the colony of New South Wales.

The question whether New Holland, or Terra Australis, or Australasia, (which we agree with Pinkerton would, from its position, be the most appropriate name,) might not be divided into two great islands, by a strait passing between the gulph of Carpentaria

and