t time
onward English explorers gradually determined with accuracy both
the coast-line and the interior of the huge stretch of land known
to us as Australia. One of the ships that had accompanied Cook on
his second voyage had made a rough survey of Van Diemen's Land,
and had come to the conclusion that it joined on to the mainland.
But in 1797, Bass, a surgeon in the navy, coasted down from Port
Jackson to the south in a fine whale boat with a crew of six men,
and discovered open sea running between the southernmost point and
Van Diemen's Land; this is still known as Bass' Strait. A companion
of his, named Flinders, coasted, in 1799, along the south coast from
Cape Leeuwin eastward, and on this voyage met a French ship at
Encounter Bay, so named from the _rencontre_. Proceeding farther,
he discovered Port Philip; and the coast-line of Australia was
approximately settled after Captain P. P. King in four voyages,
between 1817 and 1822, had investigated the river mouths.

[Illustration: THE EXPLORATION OF AUSTRALIA.]

The interior now remained to be investigated. On the east coast
this was rendered difficult by the range of the Blue Mountains,
honeycombed throughout with huge gullies, which led investigators
time after time into a cul-de-sac; but in 1813 Philip Wentworth
managed to cross them, and found a fertile plateau to the westward.
Next year Evans discovered the Lachlan and Macquarie rivers, and
penetrated farther into the Bathurst plains. In 1828-29 Captain
Sturt increased the knowledge of the interior by tracing the course
of the two great rivers Darling and Murray. In 1848 the German
explorer Leichhardt lost his life in an attempt to penetrate the
interior northward; but in 1860 two explorers, named Burke and Wills,
managed to pass from south to north along the east coast; while, in
the four years 1858 to 1862, John M'Dowall Stuart performed the
still more difficult feat of crossing the centre of the continent
from south to north, in order to trace a course for the telegraphic
line which was shortly afterwards erected. By this time settlements
had sprung up throughout the whole coast of Eastern Australia,
and there only remained the western desert to be explored. This
was effected in two journeys of John Forrest, between 1868 and
1874, who penetrated from Western Australia as far as the central
telegraphic line; while, between 1872 and 1876, Ernest Giles performed
the same feat to the north. Quite recently, in