him some biscuit; and he in return presented us with a
piece of gristly fat, probably of whale. This I tasted; but, watching an
opportunity to spit it out when he should not be looking, I perceived him
doing precisely the same thing with our biscuit, whose taste was probably
no more agreeable to him, than his whale was to me." The native watched
the commencement of Flinders' trigonometrical operations, "with
indifference, if not contempt," and after a little while left the party,
"apparently satisfied that from people who could thus occupy themselves
seriously there was nothing to be apprehended."

It was not until November 1st that the Norfolk sailed from the Furneaux
Islands on the flood-tide westward. The intervening time had been
occupied with detailed exploring and surveying work. Soundings and
observations were made, capes, islands and inlets were charted and named.
The part of Flinders' narrative dealing with these phases abounds in
detail, noted with the most painstaking particularity. Such fulness does
not make attractive literature for the reader who takes up a book of
travel for amusement. But it was highly important to record these details
at the time of the publication of Flinders' book, when the coasts and
seas of which he wrote were very little known; and it has to be
remembered that he wrote as a scientific navigator, setting down the
results of his work with completeness and precision for those interested
in his subject, not as a caterer for popular literary entertainment. He
preferred the interest in his writing to lie in the nature of the
enterprise described and the sincerity with which it was pursued rather
than in such anecdotal garniture and such play of fancy as can give charm
to the history of a voyage. His book was a substantial contribution to
the world's knowledge, and it is his especial virtue to have set down his
facts with such exactitude that our tests of them, where they are still
capable of being tested, earn him credit for punctilious veracity in
respect of those observations on wild life and natural phenomena as to
which we have to rely upon his written word. He never succumbs to the
common sin of travellers--writing to excite astonishment in the reader,
rather than to tell the exact truth as he found it. He was by nature and
training an exact man.

On the afternoon of November 3rd the sloop entered the estuary of the
river Tamar, on which, forty miles from the mouth, now stands the f