when
active service provided plentiful scope for advancement, he deliberately
preferred the explorer's hard lot. The only prize money he ever won was
10 pounds after Lord Howe's victory in 1794. "I chose a branch," he said
in a letter to Banks, "which though less rewarded by rank and fortune is
yet little less in celebrity. If adverse fortune does not oppose me, I
will succeed." He succeeded beyond all he could have hoped.

The excellence of his charts was such that to this day the Admiralty
charts for those portions of the Australian coast where he did original
work bear upon them the honoured name of Matthew Flinders; and amongst
the seamen who habitually traverse these coasts, no name, not even that
of Cook, is so deeply esteemed as his. Flinders is not a tradition; the
navigators of our own time count him a companion of the watch.

CHAPTER 30. THE NAMING OF AUSTRALIA.

The name Australia was given to the great southern continent by Flinders.
When and why he gave it that name will now be shown.

In the first place a common error must be set right. It is sometimes said
that the Spanish navigator, Pedro Fernandez de Quiros, named one of the
islands of the New Hebrides group, in 1606, Australia del Espiritu Santo.
This is not the case. The narrative of his voyage described "all this
region of the south as far as the Pole which from this time shall be
called Austrialia del Espiritu Santo," from "His Majesty's title of
Austria." The word Austrialia is a punning name. Quiros' sovereign,
Philip III, was a Habsburg; and Quiros, in compliment to him, devised the
name Austrialia as combining the meaning "Austrian land," as well as
"southern land."* (* See Markham, Voyages of Quiros, Hakluyt Society
Volume 1 page 30.)

In 1756 the word "Australasia" was coined. Charles de Brosses, in his
Histoire des Navigations aux Terres Australes, wanted a word to signify a
new division of the globe. The maps marked off Europe, Asia, Africa and
America, but the vast region to the south of Asia required a name
likewise. De Brosses simply added "Austral" to "Asia," and printed
"Australasia" upon his map.

The earliest use of the word Australia that I have been able to find,
occurs in the index to the Dutch Generale Beschrijvinge van Indien
(General Description of the Indies) published at Batavia in 1638. The
work consists mainly of accounts of voyages by Dutch vessels to the East
Indies. Among them is a history of the "Australische Na