c journey in 1821, Franklin remembered Flinders in giving names to
discoveries.

It was on March 6th that the exploration of Spencer's Gulf commenced. As
the ship sailed along the western shore, the expectations which had been
formed of a strait leading through the continent to the Gulf of
Carpentaria faded away. The coast lost its boldness, the water became
more and more shallow, and the opposite shore began to show itself. The
gulf was clearly tapering to an end. "Our prospects of a channel or
strait cutting off some considerable portion of Terra Australis grew
less, for it now appeared that the ship was entering into a gulph." On
the 10th, the Investigator having passed Point Lowly, and having on the
previous day suddenly come into two-and-a-half fathoms, Flinders decided
to finish the exploration in a rowing boat, accompanied by Surgeon Bell.
They rowed along the shore till night fell, slept in the boat, and
resumed the journey early next morning (March 11th). At ten o'clock, the
oars touched mud on each side, and it became impossible to proceed
further. They had reached the head of the gulf, then a region of mangrove
swamps and flat waters, but now covered by the wharves of Port Augusta,
and within view of the starting point of the transcontinental railway.

The disappointment was undoubtedly great at not finding even a large
river flowing into the gulf. The hope of a strait had been abandoned as
the continually converging shores, shallow waters, and diminishing banks
made it clear, long before the head was reached, that the theory of a
bifurcated Terra Australis was impossible. But as Flinders completed his
chart and placed it against the outline of the continent, he might fairly
enjoy the happiness of having settled an important problem and of taking
one more stride towards completing the map of the world.

The Investigator travelled down by the eastern shore, once hanging upon a
near bank for half an hour, and by March 20th was well outside. The
length of the gulf, from the head to Gambier Island, Flinders calculated
to be 185 miles, and its width at the mouth, in a line from Cape
Catastrophe, 48 miles. At the top it tapered almost to a point. The whole
of it was personally surveyed and charted by Flinders, who was able to
write that for the general exactness of his drawing he could "answer with
tolerable confidence, having seen all that is laid down, and, as usual,
taken every angle which enters into the const