the coast, the set of the tides, and the great swell from the south-west,
did now completely satisfy us that a very wide strait did really exist
betwixt Van Diemen's Land and New South Wales, and also now that we had
certainly passed it."

No time was lost in completing the voyage. The Norfolk sped rapidly past
Cape Grim and down the western coast of Van Diemen's Land. Amateur-built
as she was, and very small for her work in these seas, she was proving a
useful boat, and one can enjoy the sailors' pride in a snug craft in
Flinders' remark concerning her, that "upon the whole she performed
wonderfully; seas that were apparently determined to swallow her up she
rode over with all the ease and majesty of an old experienced petrel."

The wild and desolate aspect of the west coast, as seen from the ocean,
seems to have struck Flinders with a feeling of dread. He so rarely
allows any emotion to appear in his writing that the sentences in his
diary wherein he refers to the appearance of the De Witt range are
striking evidence of his revulsion. "The mountains which presented
themselves to our view in this situation, both close to the shore and
inland, were amongst the most stupendous works of nature I ever beheld,
and it seemed to me are the most dismal and barren that can be imagined.
The eye ranges over these peaks, and curiously formed lumps of adamantine
rock, with astonishment and horror." He acknowledged that he clapped on
all sail to get past this forbidding coast. The passage is singular.
Flinders was a fenland-bred man, and, passing from the low levels of
eastern England to a life at sea in early youth, had had no experience of
mountainous country. He had not even seen the mountains at the back of
Sydney, except in the blue distance. Now, the De Witt range, though
certainly giving to the coast that it dominates an aspect of desolate
grandeur, especially when, as is nearly always the case, its jagged peaks
are seen under caps of frowning cloud, would not strike a man who had
been much among mountains as especially horrid. Flinders' burst of
chilled feeling may therefore be noted as a curious psychological fact.*
(* The reader will perhaps find it interesting to compare this reference
with a passage in Ruskin's Modern Painters Volume 3 chapter 13: "It is
sufficiently notable that Homer, living in mountainous and rocky
countries, dwells thus delightedly on all the flat bits; and so I think
invariably the inhabitants of mo