the recent
great naval fight which had thrilled the heart of England with exultation
and pride. The boy who had left his father's house four years before as
an anxious aspirant for the King's uniform now returned a bronzed seaman
on the verge of manhood. His intelligence and zeal as a junior officer
had won him the esteem and confidence of distinguished commanders. He had
looked upon the strangeness and beauty of the world in its most remote
and least-known quarters, had witnessed fights with savages, threaded
unmapped straits, and had, to crown his youthful achievements, striven
amidst the wrack and thunder of grim-visaged war. We may picture his
welcome: the strong grasp of his father's hand, the crowding enthusiasm
of his brother and sisters fondly glorying in their hero's prowess. The
warnings of uncle John were all forgotten now. When the midshipman's
younger brother, Samuel Ward Flinders, desired to go to sea with him, he
was not restrained, and, in fact, accompanied him as a volunteer on the
Reliance when at length she sailed.

Hunter took not merely an official but a deep and discerning interest in
the colonisation of Australia. He foresaw its immense possibilities,
encouraged its exploration, promoted the breeding of stock and the
cultivation of crops, and had a wise concern for such strategic
advantages as would tend to secure it for British occupation. He
perceived the great importance of the Cape of Good Hope from the point of
view of Australian security; and a letter which he wrote to an official
of the Admiralty while awaiting sailing orders for the Reliance (January
25, 1795), is perhaps the first instance of official recognition of
Australia's vital interest in the ownership of that post. There was cause
for concern. The raw and ill-disciplined levies of the French, having at
the outbreak of the Revolutionary wars most unexpectedly turned back the
invading armies of Austria and Prussia, and having, after campaigns full
of dramatic changes, shaken off the peril of the crushing of the
fatherland by a huge European combination, were now waging an offensive
war in Holland. Pichegru, the French commander, though not a soldier by
training, secured astonishing successes, and, in the thick of a winter of
exceptional severity, led his ragged and ill-fed army on to victory after
victory, until the greater part of Holland lay conquered within his grip.
In January he entered Amsterdam. There was a strong element of