at Kupang ten days before the Investigator arrived, but when
another one would put in was uncertain. A vessel was due to sail for
Batavia in May, and the captain consented to take charge of a packet of
letters for transmission to England; but there was no opportunity of
sending Fowler. A few days were spent in charting a reef about which the
Admiralty had given instructions, and by April 16th the voyage to Port
Jackson was being pursued at best speed by way of the west and south
coasts. Flinders did not even stay to examine the south of Kangaroo
Island, which had not been charted during the visit in 1802, for
dysentery made its appearance on board--owing, it was believed, to a
change of diet at Timor--and half a dozen men died. Sydney was reached on
June 9th, after a voyage of ten months and nineteen days.

Australia had thus been, for the first time, completely circumnavigated
by Flinders.

An examination of the Investigator showed how perilously near destruction
she had been since she left the Gulf of Carpentaria. On the starboard
side some of the planks were so rotten that a cane could be thrust
through them. By good fortune, when she was running along the south coast
the winds were southerly, and the starboard bow, where the greatest
weakness lay, was out of the water. Had the wind been northerly, Flinders
was of opinion that it would not have been possible to keep the pumps
going sufficiently to keep the ship afloat, whilst a hard gale must
inevitably have sent her to the bottom.

As Flinders said in a letter to his wife:* (* Flinders' Papers.) "It was
the unanimous opinion of the surveying officers that, had we met with a
severe gale of wind in the passage from Timor, she must have crushed like
an egg and gone down. I was partly aware of her bad state, and returned
sooner to Port Jackson on that account before the worst weather came. For
me, whom this obstruction in the voyage and the melancholy state of my
poor people have much distressed, I have been lame about four months, and
much debilitated in health and I fear in constitution; but am now
recovering, and shall soon be altogether well." In another letter he
describes the ship as "worn out--she is decayed both in skin and bone."

Of the nine convicts who were permitted to make this voyage, one died;
the conduct of a second did not warrant Flinders in recommending him for
a pardon; the remaining seven were fully emancipated. Four sailed with
Flinders on his