To this portion of Australasia I shall systematically apply the name of Tasmania, in honour of that adventurous seaman who first added it to the list of European discoveries.  The same principle appears to have been recently acted upon by the Government in creating the Bishopric of Tasmania, and I may therefore plead high authority to sanction such innovation:* higher perhaps than will be required by him who calls to mind that hitherto the navigator who added this island, and the scarcely less important ones of New Zealand to the empire of science, has been left without a memorial, the most befitting and the most lasting that universal gratitude can consecrate to individual desert.  The insular character of Tasmania was not fully ascertained till the year 1798, when the intrepid Bass, then surgeon of H.M.S.  Reliance, while on a whaleboat cruise from Sydney, discovered the strait which bears his name.

(Footnote.  Mr. Greenough, late President of the Geological Society, in his anniversary address to that body on the 24th of May, 1841, remarks that, “It is much to be regretted that Government has not recognised Tasmania as the name of that island, improperly denominated Van Diemen’s Land.  The occurrence of a second Van Diemen’s Land on the northern coast of Australia occasions confusion; and since Tasman, not Van Diemen, was the first discoverer of the island, it would be but just that whatever honour the name confers should be given to the former navigator.”  Journal of the Royal Geographical Society of London volume 11 1841 part 1.)

SOUTH-WEST CAPE.

Towards 10 A.M. steering East by South before a long rolling sea, we passed about six miles from the South-west Cape of Tasmania.  There was no opportunity at the time of determining exactly the amount of error in the position assigned to it in the present charts, but we were satisfied that it was placed at least five miles too far south.  The Maatzuyker Isles, a group a few miles to the south-east of this cape, are also incorrectly laid down.  The view of this headland was of a very impressive and remarkable character, and to add to the usual effect of its lonely and solitary grandeur, a heavy sea still vexed and swelling from the turbulence of the recent gale, was breaking in monotonous regularity against its white and aged face; rising a thousand feet precipitously above the level of the sea, and terminating in a peak, rendered yet more conspicuous by a deep gap behind it.

The adjacent coast had a singularly wild, bare, and storm-beaten appearance.  We beheld the rugged and treeless sides of barren hills; and here and there, where vegetation struggled with sterility, its stunted growth and northern inclination caused by the prevailing winds testified to an ungenial clime; high, bare-faced peaks appeared occasionally through the thick clouds that girdled them, and the whole coastline forcibly reminded us of the dreary shores of Tierra del Fuego.