the same manner.

The men were entirely naked; but the women, who kept at a distance, and appeared small in size, wore an apron of leaves, reaching down to the knee. Many cocoa-nut trees were seen in the lower parts of the island.

When the boats returned, they were followed by four canoes. One of them went along-side of the Chesterfield; and an Indian ventured on board, on a sailor going into the canoe, as a hostage for him. Most of these people had their ears perforated. The hair was generally cut short; but some few had it flowing loose. It is naturally black; but from being rubbed with something, it had a reddish, or burnt appearance. These Indians, so far as they could be understood, represented their island to abound in refreshments; and it was, therefore, determined to send another boat to make further examination.

July 3. Mr. Shaw, chief mate of the Chesterfield, Mr. Carter, and Captain Hill of the New-South-Wales corps, who was a passenger, went away armed, with five seamen in a whale boat; and were expected to return on the following day; but the 4th, 5th, and 6th, passed, without any tidings of them; although many signal guns

had been fired.

On the 7th, two boats, manned and armed, under the command of Mr. Dell, chief mate of the Hormuzeer, were sent in search of the whale boat. On reaching the island, Mr. Dell heard conch shells sounding in different parts; and saw eighty or ninety armed natives upon the shore. To the inquiries, by signs, after the missing boat, they answered that she was gone to the westward; but none of them would venture near; nor did they pay attention to a white handkerchief which was held up, and had before been considered a signal of peace.

As the boats proceeded in their search, round the island, the natives followed along the shore, with increasing numbers. One man, who was rubbed with something blue, and appeared to be a chief, had a small axe in his hand; which was known, from the red helve, to have belonged to Mr. Shaw. On reaching the bay in the north-west side of the island, Mr. Dell remarked that the natives disappeared; all except about thirty, who were very anxious in persuading him to land. They brought down women; and made signs, that the boat and people whom he sought, were a little way up in the island. He, however, rowed onward; when the beach was immediately crowded with people, who had been lying in ambush, expecting him to land.

After having gone entirely round the island, and seen nothing of the object of his research, Mr. Dell returned to the first cove; where a great concourse of natives, armed with bows, arrows, clubs, and lances, were assembled at the outskirt of the wood. By offer ing knives and other things, a few were induced to approach the boat; and the coxswain seized one of them by the hair and neck, with the intention of his being taken off to the ships, to give an account of the missing boat and people. A shower of arrows in-. stantly came out of the wood; and a firing was commenced, which killed one Indian, and wounded some others. In the mean time,

the

the coxswain found it impossible to keep the man, from his hair and body being greased; and the boat's crew was too much occupied to

assist him.

• July 8. The two commanders having heard the report of Mr. Dell, proceeded with the ships, round the northern reefs and sand banks, to the bay on the north-west side of Darnley's Island, which was named Treacherous Bay. On the 9th, in the afternoon, they anchored with springs on the cables. A boat was sent on shore, and returned at sunset, with a few cocoa nuts; but without having seen any of the inhabitants. July 10. An armed party of forty-four men landed from the ships, under the command of Mr. Dell. After hoisting the union jack, and taking possession of this, and the neighbouring islands and coast of New Guinea, in the name of his Majesty, they examined the huts, and found the great coats of Captain Hill, Mr. Carter, and Mr. Shaw; with several other things which had belonged to them, and to the boats' crew; so that no doubt was entertained of their having been murdered. In the evening, the party arrived from making the tour of the island; having burnt and destroyed onehundred-and-thirty-five huts; sixteen canoes, measuring from fifty to seventy feet in length; and various plantations of sugar cane. The natives appeared to have retired to the hills in the centre of the island; as not one of them could be discovered.

Darnley's Island was judged to be about fifteen miles in circumference. It is variegated with hills and plains; and the richness of the vegetation bespoke it to be very fertile; it appeared, however, to be scantily supplied with fresh water, there being only one small place where it was found near the shore. The plantations of the natives, which were extensive and numerous in the plains, contained yams, sweet potatoes, plantains, and sugar canes, inclosed within neat fences of bamboo; and cocoa-nut trees were very abundant, particu larly near the habitations.' In the huts or habitations of these people, usually on the right hand side near the entrance, were suspended two or three human skulls, and several strings of hands, five or six in a string. They were hung round a wooden image of a man rudely carved; and in one hut containing much the greater number of skulls, a kind of gum was found burning before one of these images.'

On the 11th, another armed party landed, from whom the natives fled, though one native, a boy, was made prisoner unhurt:' but we are not told what afterward became of him. July the 21st, the ships had made a small advance from Treacherous Bay, when two canoes from another island went to the Hormuzeer, and an Indian out of one of them entered the ship without shewing any symptom of fear or apprehension. To inquiries made, he answered by signs that six people were killed. The wonderful part of this adventure remains to be related, and was not known to the people in the Hormuzeer and Chesterfield till after the termination of their voyage. Of

the

the eight Englishmen who went from the latter ship in the whale-boat, three escaped the massacre; viz. Mr. Shaw (the mate), Mr. Carter, and a seaman named Ascot, who fled to the boat, cut the grapnel rope, and got clear off from the shore. They were without provisions or compass; and it being impossible to reach the ships, which lay five leagues to windward, they bore away to the west, through the Strait, in the hope of reaching Timor. On the tenth day, they made land; which proved to be Timor-laoet. They there obtained some relief to their great distress; and went on to an island called by the natives, Sarrett; where Mr. Carter died: Messieurs Shaw and Ascot sailed in a prow, for Banda, in the April following.'

Captain Flinders observes that a thorough acquaintance with the navigation through Torres-Strait would, on many occasions, be of great convenience, particularly in the saving of time in sailing from the coast of Peru or Chili to the East Indies; and we recollect that M. Bougainville's voyage incurred a prolongation of some months of laborious navigation, because he had not any knowlege of Torres-Strait.—In the section which treats of the prior disco veries on the south coast, the author bestows handsome and well merited encomiums on the charts of Van Diemen's Land published with the Voyage of Admiral D'Entrecasteaux.

The fourth section of the Introduction contains the discovery made by Mr. George Bass, surgeon of an armed ship on the New South Wales station, (a man of singular enterprise,) and Mr. Flinders, who was then a young midshipman, of the separation of Van Diemen's Land from the larger land to the northward, by a strait which has been named after Mr. Bass. The account of this discovery is exceedingly curious. Much of the examinations of coast, performed by these adventurous persons, was undertaken in a boat only eight feet in length, which was called Tom Thumb, with a crew composed only of themselves and a boy whose name should have appeared.

We come now to the Voyage of Captain Flinders in the Investigator; a north-country-built ship, of 334 tons burthen, provided with ten guns and a complement of 83 men; besides whom, the following men of science were engaged to embark in her to perform the voyage: Mr. Crosley, astronomer; Mr. Brown, naturalist; Mr. Bauer, and Mr. W. Westall, painters of natural history and of landscapes; a gardener, and a miner. In the Admiralty-instructions to Captain Flinders, the name New Holland is used in the common course of language and as an established matter of course, to signify the whole of this large land. The instructions say, "It is our intention

that you should proceed in the Investigator to the coast of New Holland, for the purpose of making a complete examination and survey of the said coast, on the eastern side of which his Majesty's colony of New South Wales is situated."-The fittingout of this expedition was officially notified to the French Minister in London, and application was made to his Court for a passport; in order that, in the event of a war between this country and France, Captain Flinders's ship might be regarded as neutral. The passport was granted in the name of the First Consul, and specified that "this expedition, being intended for the promotion of science and the extension of human knowlege, should find on the part of the French government all necessary security and protection; and that all ships of war belonging to France, and all public agents in the French colonies, should allow to pass freely and without impediment the corvette Investigator, her officers, crew, and their effects, during the continuance of their voyage, in all parts of the world, and should afford them supplies and assistance."

The ship was fitted out at Sheerness, and, towards the end of May 1801, sailed thence for Spithead. In this short passage and early part of the voyage, a very extraordinary circumstance occurred, which, as many vessels are not furnished with the Admiralty-charts, we think we are doing some service in assisting to make public. Captain Flinders observes that this instance, among many others, proves the necessity for a regulation which has since been adopted, of supplying his Majesty's ships with correct charts.

After leaving the pilot in the Downs,' says the Captain, I was under the necessity to trust almost wholly to my chart, which was that of Mr. J. H. Moore. In working up under Dungeness, on the evening of May 28., we made a trip in shore, towards the town of Hythe, as I supposed from the chart. A little after six, the officer of the watch had reported our distance from the land to be near two leagues; and there being from ten to fourteen fathoms marked within two or three miles of it, and no mention of any shoal lying in the way, I intended to stand on half an hour longer; but in ten minutes felt the ship lifting upon a bank. The sails were immediately thrown aback; and the weather being fine and water smooth, the ship was got off without having received any apparent injury.

This sand is laid down in the Admiralty charts, under the name of the Roar; and extends from Dungeness towards Folkstone, at the distance of from two and a half, to four miles from the land. The leadsman, having found no bottom with fifteen fathoms at ten minutes before six, had very culpably quitted the chains when his watch was out, without taking another cast of the lead; and the ship, in going at the rate of two knots and three quarters, was upon the bank at twenty minutes after six; so that it appears to be steep on the east side.

REV. FEB. 1815.

The bearings given by the azimuth compass, whilst the ship was aground, were as under :

Dungeness light-house,

Lidd church,

Town of Dim, but taken to be Hythe,
Cheriton church, then supposed to be Folkstone,
Cliffy eastern extreme of the land, near Dover,

S. W.
W. by S. S.

N. W. by N.

E. N. E.

E. N.

The distance from the town of Hythe (Dim,) was guessed to be not less than two-and-half, nor more than four miles.

In consequence of this accident, we went into Portsmouth har bour and into dock on June 10.; and it being ascertained that the ship had received no injury, we returned to Spithead next day.'

In sailing to the Cape of Good Hope, Captain Flinders made search for an island in the south Atlantic named Saxemberg, the situation of which has been so badly described as to have rendered its existence doubtful. He did not find this island: but, on arriving at the Cape, he received information that Mr. Long, commanding a sloop named the Columbus, in sailing from Brazil to the Cape of Good Hope, had seen Saxemberg, situated in latitude 30° 18′ S., and longitude 28° 20′ W.; which situation differs about half a degree in latitude, and almost nine degrees in longitude, from the place assigned to it in the tables and charts.'

At the Cape of Good Hope, Captain Flinders had the misfortune to be deprived of the assistance of Mr. Crosley, the astronomer, who for some time before had been in a bad state of health, and now found it necessary on that account to relinquish the expedition.

December 6., the Investigator came in sight of the coast of New Holland, near Cape Leeuwin, the south-west Cape; and from this date to April (1802) the time was occupied in examining and surveying the coast from Cape Leeuwin to Bass's Strait. Along this range of coast, Captain Flinders has allotted, in the charts of his survey, to the different first discoverers their several portions of coast. While making this examination of the south coast, on April the 8th, the Investigator being about twelve leagues to the east of an island named Kanguroo Island, a strange sail was seen; which at first was taken to be a white rock, but proved to be the French national ship Le Géographe, commanded by Captain Nicolas Baudin, who was also employed on an expedition of examination and discovery. The ships broughtto, near each other, and Captain Flinders went on board the Géographe, of which visit he gives this account:

'As I did not understand French, Mr. Brown went with me. We were received by an officer who pointed out the commander, and by him were conducted into the cabin. I requested Captain Baudin to

shew