yet another Dutch exploring squadron on that coast in 1705, but the results were of little importance. It was Captain Cook, in his voyages from 1769 to 1777, who communicated the most important discoveries, and first opened to European enterprise and settlement the Australasian coasts. In command of the bark " Endeavour," 370 tons burden, and carrying 85 persons, amongst whom were Sir Joseph Banks and Dr Solander, returning from the Eoyal Society s expedition to observe the transit of Venus, Cook visited both New Zealand and New South Wales. He came upon the Australian mainland in April 1770, at a point named after Lieutenant Hicks, who first sighted it, on the shore of Gipps Land, Victoria, S. lat. 38, E. long. 148 53 . From this point, in a coasting voyage not without peril when entangled in the barrier reefs of coral, the little vessel made its way up the whole length of the eastern side of Australia, rounding Cape York, and crossing Torres Strait to New Guinea. In his second expedition of Australasian discovery, which was sent out in 1773, Cook s ship, the "Resolute," started in com pany with the " Adventure," commanded by Captain Fur- .neaux. The two vessels separated, and Cook went to New Zealand, while Furneaux examined some parts of Tasmania and Bass Strait. The third voyage of Cook brought him, in 1777, both to Tasmania and to New Zealand. Next to Cook, twenty or thirty years after his time, the names of Bass and Flinders are justly honoured for con tinuing the work of maritime discovery he had so well begun. To their courageous and persevering efforts, begun at their private risk, is due the correct determination of the shape both of Tasmania and the neighbouring continent. The French admiral Entrecasteaux, in 1792, had made a careful examination of the inlets at the south of Tasmania, and in his opinion the opening between Tasmania and Australia was only a deep bay. It was Bass who discovered it to be a broad strait, with numerous small islands. Captain Flinders survived his friend Bass, having been associated with him in 1798 in this and other useful adventures. Flinders afterwards made a complete survey in detail of all the Australian coasts, except the west and north-west. He was captured, however, by the French during the war, and detained a prisoner in Mauri tius for seven years. The shores of what is now the province of Victoria were explored in 1800 by Captain Grant, and in 1802 by Lieutenant Murray, when the spacious land-locked bay of Port Phillip was discovered. New South Wales had already been colonised, and the town of Sydney founded at Port Jackson in 1788. West Australia had long remained neglected, but in 1837, after the settlement at Swan River, a series of coast surveys was commenced in H.M.S. "Beagle." These were continued from 1839 to 1843 by Mr Stokes, and furnished an "exact knowledge of the western, north-western, and northern shores, including four large rivers.
Inland Exploration. The geographical position of the Australian continent had now been sufficiently determined, and what Remained for discovery was sought, not as hitherto by coasting along its shores and bays, but by striking into the vast tract of terra incognita that occupied the interior. The colony of New South Wales had been founded in 1788, but for twenty-five years its settlers were acquainted only with a strip of country 50 miles wide, between the Blue Mountains and the sea-coast, for they scarcely ever ventured far inland from the inlets of Port Jackson and Botany Bay. Mr Bass, indeed, once while waiting for his vessel, made an attempt to cross the Blue Mountains, and succeeded in discovering the River Grove, a tributary of the Hawkesbury, but did not proceed further. An expedition was also conducted by Governor Hunter along the Nepean River west of the settlement, while Lieutenant Bareiller, in 1802, and Mr Caiey, a year or two later, failed in their endeavour to surmount the Blue Mountain range. This formidable ridge attains a height of 3400 feet, and being intersected with precipitous ravines 1500 feet deep, pre sented a bar to these explorers passage inland. At last, in 1813, when a summer of severe drought had made it of vital importance to find new pastures, three of the colonists, Messrs Went worth and Blaxland and Lieutenant Lawson, crossing the Nepean at Emu Plains, gained sight of an entrance, and ascending the summit of a dividing ridge, obtained a view of the grassy valley of the Fish River. This stream runs westward into the Macquarie, which was discovered a few months afterwards by Mr Evans, who followed its course across the fertile plains of Bathurst. In 1816 Lieutenant Oxley, R.N., accompanied by Mr Evans and Mr Cunningham the botanist, conducted an expedition of great interest down the Lachlan River, 300 miles to the north-west, reaching a point 34 S. lat., and 144 30 E. long. On his return journey Oxley again struck the Macquarie River at a place he called Wellington, and from this place in the following year he organised a second expedition in hopes of discovering an inland sea. He was, however, disappointed in this, as after descending the course of the Macquarie below Mount Harris, he found that the river ended in an immense swamp overgrown with reeds. Oxley now turned aside led by Mr Evans s report of the country eastward crossed the Arbuthnot range, and traversing the Liverpool Plains, and ascending the Peel and Cockburn Rivers to the Blue Mountains, gained sight of the open sea, which he reached at Port Macquarie. A valuable extension of geographical knowledge had been gained by this circuitous journey of more than 800 miles. Yet its result was a disappointment to those who had looked for means of inland navigation by the Macquarie River, and by its supposed issue in a Mediterranean sea. During the next two or three years public attention was occupied with Captain King s maritime explorations of the north-west coast in three successive voyages, and by ex plorations of West Australia in 1821. These steps Avere followed by the foundation of a settlement on Melville Island, in the extreme north, which, however, was soon abandoned. In 1823 Lieutenant Oxley proceeded to Moreton Bay and Port Curtis, the first place 7 north of Sydney, the other 10, to choose the site of a new penal establishment. From a shipwrecked English sailor he met with, who had lived with the savages, he heard of the river Brisbane. About the same time, in the opposite direction, south-west of Sydney, a large extent of the interior was revealed. The River Murrumbidgee which unites with the Lachlan to join the great River Murray was traced by Mr Hamilton Hume and Mr Hovell into the country lying north of the province of Victoria, through which they made their way to Port Phillip. In 1827 and the two following years, Mr Cunningham prosecuted his instructive explora tions on both sides of the Liverpool range, between the upper waters of the Hunter and those of the Peel and other tributaries of the Brisbane north of New South Wales. Some of his discoveries, including those of Pandora s Pass and the Darling Downs, were of great practical utility. By this time much had thus been done to obtain an acquaintance with the eastern parts of the Australian con tinent, although the problem of what could become of the large rivers flowing north-west and south-west into the interior was still unsolved. With a view to determine this question, Governor Sir Ralph Darling, in the year 1828, sent out the expedition under Captain Charles Sturt, who proceeding first to the marshes at the end of the Mac quarie River, found his progress checked by the dense mass
of reeds in that quarter. He therefore turned westward,
