there. The country was clearly one immense whole. But what was it to be called? Terra Australis, Southern Land, was too long, was cumbrous, was Latin. That would not be a convenient name for a country that was to play any part in the world. The Dutch had named the part which they found New Holland. But they knew nothing of the east. Cook called the part which he had discovered New South Wales. But Cook knew nothing of the west. Neither the Dutch nor Cook knew anything of the south, a large part of which Flinders himself had discovered.
We find him for the first time using the word "Australia" in a letter written to his brother Samuel on August 25th, 1804.[1] He was then living at Wilhelm's Plains: "I call the whole island Australia, or Terra Australis. New Holland is properly that portion of it from 135° of longitude westward; and eastward is New South Wales, according to the Governor's patent."
Flinders' first public use of the word was not in English, but in French. In the essay on the probable fate of Laperouse, written for the Société d'Émulation in Ile-de-France (1807), he again stated the need for a word in terms which I translate as follows: "The examination of the eastern part was commenced in 1770 by Captain Cook, and has since been completed by English navigators.[2] The first (i.e., the west) is New Holland properly so called, and the second bears the name of New South Wales. I have considered it convenient to unite the two parts under a common designation which will do justice to the discovery rights of Holland and England, and I have with that object in view had recourse to the name Austral-land or Austra-
