British Government equipped the Investigator for the exploration of New Holland, and commissioned Flinders to command her. One so adventurous, so conscientious, and so able, except for adventitious circumstances which do not, as a rule, affect the man for the work other than to assist him, could not but rise to the occasion. He accomplished with distinction the objects of the expedition, and conferred the name upon the continent which it appropriately bears. He had as companions John Franklin, afterwards the renowned Arctic explorer; Robert Brown, the eminent botanist; and William Westall, the celebrated landscape painter.
On a summer evening, January 28, 1802, Flinders anchored in what he named Fowler Bay after his first lieutenant. Thence he searchingly scrutinised the coast, and gave to the principal features such names as Streaky Bay, Smoky Bay, Denial Bay, Investigator Group, Coffin Bay, and Anxious Bay. As is usual in the southern summer, the vision of the navigator was occasionally circumscribed by thick smoke arising from bushfires, or by the vaporous haze which arose from the water; hence the appellation Smoky Bay. Streaky Bay derived its name from the singular color of the sea; Coffin Bay from Vice-Admiral Sir Isaac Coffin, Bart.; and Anxious Bay from a heavy wind which caused some apprehension to the navigators when in the neighborhood. The dense haze also tended to give a false impression of the features of the coastline, and Flinders tells us that it made a sandy beach look like a chalky cliff, and gave low-lying islands the appearance of steep shores.
The deep gulfs stretching far into the interior of the continent—between which lies a peninsula somewhat resembling the human leg and foot greatly adorned with excrescent growths—on the shores of which were made the first organised settlements in this part of the continent, were not discovered until late in February. On Saturday, the 20th of that month, the Investigator gently moved into Sleaford Bay. No set of tide worthy of observation had yet been noted on this coast, but here the mariners were vastly interested by the appearance of a flow from the north, apparently the ebb. As no land could be seen in the north-east, the tide might mean that New Holland, or Australia, was cut in two. During the evening,
