look at
them again, and found that they had disappeared. Whether she had lent
them to some person who had failed to return them, or had mislaid them,
is unknown. It is possible that they may still be in existence in some
dusty cupboard in England, and that we may even yet be gratified by an
examination of documents which would assuredly enable us to understand
more of the noble soul of George Bass.

It has been mentioned that Flinders and Bass did not meet again after the
voyage of the Norfolk and Bass's return to England. Though Sydney was the
base of both Flinders in the Investigator and Bass in the Venus in 1802
and 1803, they always had the ill-luck to miss each other. Bass was at
Tahiti while Flinders lay in port from May 9th to July 21st, 1802. He
returned in November, and left once more on his final voyage in February,
1803. Flinders arrived in Sydney again, after his exploration of the Gulf
of Carpentaria, in June, 1803. A farewell letter from him to his friend
is quoted in a later chapter.

CHAPTER 11. ON THE QUEENSLAND COAST.

Two more incidents in the career of Flinders will concern us before we
deal with his important later voyages. The first of these is only worth
mentioning for the light it throws upon the character of the man. In
March, 1799, he sat as a member of a court of criminal judicature in
Sydney, for the trial of Isaac Nichols, who was charged with receiving a
basket of tobacco knowing it to have been stolen. The case aroused
passionate interest at the time. People in the settlement took sides upon
it, as upon a matter of acute party politics, and the Governor was hotly
at variance with the Judge Advocate, the chief judicial officer.

Nichols had been a convict, but his conduct was good, and he was chosen
to be chief overseer of a gang employed in labour of various kinds. On
the expiration of his sentence, he acquired a small farm, and by means of
sobriety and industry built himself a comfortable house. Through his very
prosperity he became "an object to be noticed," as the Governor wrote,
and by reason of his diligent usefulness securing him official
employment, "he stood in the way of others." In Hunter's opinion, the
ruin of Nichols was deliberately planned; and he was convicted on what
the Governor believed to be false and malicious evidence.

The striking feature of the trial was that the Court (consisting of seven
members--three naval officers and three officers of the New South Wale