to England in the Reliance.

1800 (October) : Arrival in England.
Plan of Australian Exploration.

1800 (December) : The Investigator commissioned.

1801 (January 17) : Publication of Observations.

1801 (February 16) : Obtains commander's rank.

1801 (April) : Marriage of Flinders.

1801 (July 18) : Sailing of the Investigator.

1801 (December) : Australia reached.

1802 (February) : Discovery of Spencer's Gulf.

1802 (March) : Discovery of Kangaroo Island and St. Vincent's Gulf.

1802 (April) : Meeting of Flinders and Baudin in Encounter Bay.

1802 (May) : Flinders in Port Phillip.

1802 (July) : Voyage to Northern Australia.

1802 (August) : Discovery of Port Curtis and Port Bowen.

1802 (November) : In the Gulf of Carpentaria.

1803 (April) : Return voyage; Australia circumnavigated.

1803 (June) : Sydney reached; the Investigator condemned.

1803 (July 10) : Sails in the Porpoise.

1803 (August 17) : Wrecked on the Barrier Reef.
Voyage in the Hope to Sydney.

1803 (September 8) : Arrival in Port Jackson.

1803 (September 21) : Sails in the Cumberland.

1803 (November) : Timor reached.

1803 (December 17) : Arrival at Ile-de-France; made a prisoner.

1804 (April) : Removal to the Garden Prison (Maison Despeaux).

1805 : Removal to Wilhelm's Plains.

1806 (March 21) : French Government orders release of Flinders.

1810 (June 13) : Release of Flinders.

1810 (October 24) : Return to England.

1814 (July 19) : Death of Flinders.

***

THE LIFE OF MATTHEW FLINDERS.

CHAPTER 1. BIRTH AND ORIGINS.

Matthew Flinders was the third of the triad of great English sailors by
whom the principal part of Australia was revealed. A poet of our own
time, in a line of singular felicity, has described it as the "last
sea-thing dredged by sailor Time from Space; "* (* Bernard O'Dowd,
Dawnward, 1903.) and the piecemeal, partly mysterious, largely accidental
dragging from the depths of the unknown of a land so immense and
bountiful makes a romantic chapter in geographical history. All the great
seafaring peoples contributed something towards the result. The Dutch
especially evinced their enterprise in the pursuit of precise information
about the southern Terra Incognita, and the nineteenth century was well
within its second quarter before the name New Holland, which for over a
hundred years had borne testimony to their adventurous pioneering, gave
place in general and geographical literature t