before us."

The English officers and respectable inhabitants then at Port Jackson can
say if the prior discovery of these parts were not generally
acknowledged; nay, I appeal to the French officers themselves, generally
and individually, if such were not the case. How then 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.

The motive for this aggression I do not pretend to explain. It may have
originated in the desire to rival the British nation in the honour of
completing the discovery of the globe; or be intended as the forerunner
of a claim to the possession of the countries so said to have been first
discovered by French navigators. Whatever may have been the object in
view, the question, so far as I am concerned, must be left to the
judgment of the world; and if succeeding French writers can see and admit
the claims of other navigators as clearly and readily as a late most able
man of that nation* has pointed out their own in some other instances, I
shall not fear to leave it even to their decision.

[* M. DE FLEURIEU.]

CHAPTER IX.

Examination of the coast resumed.
Encounter Bay.
The capes Bernouilli and Jaffa.
Baudin's Rocks.
Differences in the bearings on tacking.
Cape Buffon, the eastern limit of the French discovery.
The capes Northumberland and Bridgewater of captain Grant.
Danger from a south-west gale.
King's Island, in Bass' Strait: Anchorage there.
Some account of the island.
Nautical observations.
New Year's Isles.
Cape Otway, and the north-west entrance to Bass' Strait.
Anchorage in, and examination of Port Phillip.
The country and inhabitants.
Nautical observations.

[SOUTH COAST. ENCOUNTER BAY]

FRIDAY 9 APRIL 1802

I returned with Mr. Brown on board the Investigator at half past eight in
the morning, and we then separated from Le Geographe; captain Baudin's
course being directed to the north-west, and ours to the southward. We
had lost ground during the night, and the wind was very feeble at east,
so that the French ship was in sight at noon, and our situation was as
follows:

Latitude observed, 35 deg. 44'
Longitude by time keepers, 138 53
Cape Jervis bore