food, their clothing was drenched, and their sole means of defence
consisted of a rusty musket, with very little ammunition, a couple of
useless pistols, and two small swords.

The wretched band commenced their march along the coast northwards on
March 25th. They had to improvise rafts to cross some rivers; once a
party of kindly aboriginals helped them over a stream in canoes; at
another time they encountered blacks who hurled spears at them. They
lived chiefly on small shell-fish. Hunger and exposure brought their
strength very low. On April 16th, after over a month of weary tramping,
nine of the party dropped from fatigue and had to be left behind by their
companions, whose only hope was to push on while sufficient energy
lasted. Two days later, three of the remainder were wounded by blacks. At
last, in May, three only of the seventeen who started on this
heart-breaking struggle for life against distance, starvation and
exhaustion, were rescued, "scarcely alive," by a fishing boat, and taken
to Sydney. The others perished by the way.

Captain Hamilton, who had stayed by his wrecked ship, was rescued in
July, 1797; and, as already stated, in January of the following year,
Governor Hunter fitted out the schooner Francis to bring away a few
Lascar sailors and as much of the remaining cargo as could be saved. "I
sent in the schooner," wrote the Governor in a despatch, "Lieutenant
Flinders of the Reliance, a young man well-qualified, in order to give
him an opportunity of making what observations he could among those
islands." The Francis sailed on February 1st.

The black shadow of the catastrophe that had overtaken the Sydney Cove
crossed the path of the salvage party. The Francis was accompanied by the
ten-ton sloop Eliza, Captain Armstrong. But shortly after reaching the
Furneaux Islands the two vessels were separated in a storm, and the Eliza
went down with all hands. Neither the boat nor any soul of her company
were ever seen or heard of again.

Flinders had only twelve days available for his own work, from February
16th till the 28th, but he made full and valuable use of that time in
exploring, observing and charting. The fruits of his researches were
embodied in a drawing sent to the British Government by Hunter, when he
announced the discovery of Bass Strait later on in 1798. The principal
geographical result was the discovery of the Kent group of islands, which
Flinders named "in honour of my friend" the bra