10. Imprisonment of Flinders.—Flinders continued his voyage northwards, rounded Cape York, and examined the northern coasts, making an excellent chart of Torres Strait; but his vessel becoming too rotten to be longer used, he was forced to return to Sydney. Desiring to carry his charts and journals to England, he took his passage in an old store-ship, but she had not sailed far before she struck on a coral reef; the crew with difficulty reached a small sandbank, from which they were not released till two months after. Flinders saved his papers, and brought them back to Sydney. A small schooner, the Cumberland, was given him in which to sail for England; but she was too leaky, and too small a vessel to carry food for so long a voyage; so that he was forced to put into the Mauritius, which then belonged to France. He fancied that his passport from Napoleon would be his protection; but the Governor, De Caen, a low and ignorant fellow, seized him, took his papers from him, and cast him into prison.
Baudin soon after called at the Mauritius, and would probably have procured the release of his brother-mariner had he not died immediately after his arrival. The charts of Flinders, however, were all sent to France, where they were published with altered names, as if they were the work of Frenchmen. Meanwhile, Flinders was spending the weary months in close confinement at the Mauritius.
11. Death of Flinders.—Nearly six years passed away before the approach of an English fleet compelled the French to release him; and when he went to England he found that people knew all about those very places of which he thought he was bringing the first tidings. He commenced, however, to write his great book, and worked with the utmost pains to make all his maps scrupulously accurate. After about four years of incessant labour, the three volumes were ready for the press; but he was doomed never to see them. So many years of toil, so many nights passed in open boats or on the wet sands, so many shipwrecks and weeks of semi-starvation, together with his long and unjust imprisonment, had utterly destroyed his constitution; and on the very day when his book was being published, the wife and daughter of Flinders were tending his last painful hours. He was, perhaps, our greatest maritime discoverer: a man who worked because his heart was in his work; who sought no reward, and obtained none; who lived laboriously, and did honourable service to mankind; yet died, like his friend Bass, almost unknown to those of his own day, but leaving a name which the world is every year more and more disposed to honour.
CHAPTER IV.
NEW SOUTH WALES, 1800-1808.
1. Governor King.—Governor Hunter, who left Sydney in the year 1800, was succeeded by Captain King, the young officer who has been already mentioned as the founder of the settlement at Norfolk Island. He was a man of much ability, and was both active and industrious; yet so overwhelming at this time were the difficulties of Governorship in New South Wales, that his term of office was little more than a distressing failure. The colony consisted chiefly of convicts, who were—many of them—the most depraved and hardened villains to be met with in the history of crime. To keep these in check, and to maintain order, was no easy task; but to make them work, to convert them into industrious and well-behaved members of the community, was far beyond any Governor’s power. King made an effort, and did his very best; but after a time he grew disheartened, and, in his disappointment, complained of the folly which expected him to make farmers out of pickpockets. His chances of success would have been much increased had he been properly seconded by his subordinates. But, unfortunately, circumstances had arisen which caused the officers and soldiers not only to render him no assistance whatever, but even to thwart and frustrate his most careful plans.
The Explorers’ Tree, Katoomba, N.S.W.