er lying upon the island prompted the
curiosity of Flinders. Trunks of trees lay about in all directions "and
were nearly of the same size and in the same progress towards decay; from
whence it would seem that they had not fallen from age nor yet been
thrown down in a gale of wind. Some general conflagration, and there were
marks apparently of fire on many of them, is perhaps the sole cause which
can be reasonably assigned; but whence came the woods on fire? There were
no inhabitants upon the island, and that the natives of the continent did
not visit it was demonstrated, if not by the want of all signs of such
visits, yet by the tameness of the kangaroo, an animal which, on the
continent, resembles the wild deer in timidity. Perhaps lightning might
have been the cause, or possibly the friction of two dead trees in a
strong wind; but it would be somewhat extraordinary that the same thing
should have happened at Thistle's Island, Boston Island, and at this
place, and apparently about the same time. Can this part of Terra
Australis have been visited before, unknown to the world? The French
navigator, Laperouse, was ordered to explore it, but there seems little
probability that he ever passed Torres Strait.

"Some judgment may be formed of the epoch when these conflagrations
happened, from the magnitude of the growing trees; for they must have
sprung up since that period. They were a species of eucalyptus, and being
less than the fallen tree, had most probably not arrived at maturity; but
the wood is hard and solid, and it may thence be supposed to grow slowly.
With these considerations, I should be inclined to fix the period at not
less than ten, nor more than twenty years before our arrival. This brings
us back to Laperouse. He was in Botany Bay in the beginning of 1788, and,
if he did pass through Torres Strait, and come round to this coast, as
was his intention, it would probably be about the middle or latter end of
that year, or between thirteen and fourteen years before the
Investigator. My opinion is not favourable to this conjecture; but I have
furnished all the data to enable the reader to form his own opinion upon
the cause which might have prostrated the woods of these islands."

The passage is worth quoting, if only for the interesting allusion to
Laperouse, whose fate was, at the time when Flinders sailed and wrote, an
unsolved mystery of the sea. Captain Dillon's discovery of relics at
Vanikoro, in 1826, twel