ction in
endeavouring to suppress the improper traffic in rum which was being
carried on by the officers of the New South Wales Regiment. This second
mutiny, of which he was the victim, certainly cannot be blamed against
the honesty of his administration; and the assertion, so often repeated,
that he hid himself under his bed when the mutinous soldiers--who had
been well primed with rum by their officers--marched to Government
House, can best be answered by the statement that Nelson publicly
thanked him for his skill and gallantry at Copenhagen, and by the
heroism which he showed in the most remarkable boat voyage in history.
He may have been the most tyrannical and overbearing naval officer that
ever entered the service, but he was not the man to hide himself under a
bed.

There were other naval officers of the early Australian days whose
services were no less valuable to the infant colony. Think of the men
associated with this time, and of the names famous in history, which
are in some way linked with Australia. Dampier, Cook, La Perouse, Bligh,
Edwards and the _Pandora_, Vancouver, Flinders, Bass--all these are
familiar to the world, and there are others in plenty; for example,
Grant, who in his vessel, the brig _Lady Nelson_, did such work in
Australian waters as, if performed nowadays say in Africa, would have
been recorded in hundreds of newspaper interviews, many process-work
pictures and a 21s. book with cheap editions!

What a story is that of Bass and Flinders! Such noble, disinterested
courage! Such splendid service to English colonisation, and such a sad
ending to it all.

Bass and Flinders, in their tiny open boat, the _Tom Thumb_, and in the
sloop _Norfolk_, dotting the blank map of Australia with the names of
their discoveries--it is not necessary surely to remind the reader
that Bass began, and together the two men completed, the discovery and
passage of the straits between Van Dieman's Land and the main continent.
Bass surveyed something like six hundred miles of the Australian coast
in a whaleboat with a crew of six men! And one _cannot_ summarise
Flinders' work in the _Norfolk_ and in the _Investigator_ before the old
ship was condemned and converted into a hulk to rot in Sydney Harbour.

How were these men rewarded for their services, and what has posterity
done to keep their names in remembrance? In 1803 Flinders started for
England, was wrecked, and making his way to the Mauritius was there,
t