nt in the
continent of Australia, the extremity of Wilson's Promontory. The bold
outlines were sighted at seven o'clock in the morning. "We were surprised
by the sight of high hummocky land right ahead, and at a considerable
distance." Bass called it Furneaux Land in his diary, in the belief that
a portion of the great granite peninsula had been seen by the captain of
the Adventure in 1773. Furneaux' name is still attached to the group of
islands divided by Banks' Strait from the north-east corner of Tasmania.
But the name which Bass gave to the Promontory was not retained. It is
not likely that Furneaux ever saw land so far west. "It cannot be the
same, as Mr. Bass was afterwards convinced," wrote Flinders. Governor
Hunter, "at our recommendation," named it Wilson's Promontory, "in
compliment to my friend Thomas Wilson, Esq., of London." It has been
stated that the name was given to commemorate William Wilson, one of the
whaleboat crew, who "jumped ashore first."* (* Ida Lee, The Coming of the
British to Australia, London 1906 page 51.) Nobody "jumped ashore first"
on the westward voyage, when the discovery was made, because, as Bass
twice mentions in his diary, "we could not land." Doubly inaccurate is
the statement of another writer that "the promontory was seen and named
by Grant in 1800 after Admiral Wilson."* (* Blair, Cyclopaedia of
Australia, 748.) Grant himself, on his chart of Bass Strait, marked down
the promontory as "accurately surveyed by Matthew Flinders, which he
calls Wilson's Promontory," and on page 78 of his Narrative wrote that it
was named by Bass. The truth is, as related above, that it was named by
Hunter on the recommendation of Bass and Flinders; and the two
superfluous Wilsons have no proper place in the story. The Thomas Wilson
whose name was thus given to one of the principal features of the
Australian coast--a form of memorial far more enduring than "storied urn
or animated bust"--is believed to have been a London merchant, engaged
partly in the Australian trade. Nothing more definite is known about him.
He was as one who "grew immortal in his own despight." Of the Promontory
itself Bass wrote--and the words are exceedingly apt--that it was "well
worthy of being the boundary point of a large strait, and a corner stone
of this great island New Holland."

Bass found the neighbourhood of the Promontory to be the home of vast
numbers of petrels, gulls and other birds, as is still the case, and h