The dry technicalities of the surveying work, interesting enough to the people of those places on the coasts of Australia which are now flourishing seaports, but where not a century ago Bass and Flinders landed for the first time, are too local in their interests to warrant more than a passing reference here.  The bold explorers met with so many stirring adventures that the present writers can only “reel off the yarn,” and let lovers of topography go, if they are so inclined, to the charts, and study how much valuable map-making, as well as exciting incident, these young men crowded into their lives.

When Hunter returned to New South Wales in the Reliance to take office as governor, he brought with him Matthew Flinders as second lieutenant; and to Sir Joseph Banks, whose influence secured the appointment, this is only one of the many debts of gratitude owed by New South Wales for his foresight and honesty in making such selections.  Flinders was then twenty-one years of age.  His father was a surgeon at Donington, a village in Lincolnshire.

[Illustration:  GEORGE BASS.  From a miniature.  From “The Historical Records of New South Wales” [Sydney, 1889, etc.]. To face p. 168.]

Robinson Crusoe, so he himself tells us, sent him to sea, and his departure from home was soon followed by that of his brother Samuel.  Matthew served first in the Scipio under Pasley; then he accompanied Bligh in the Providence to Tahiti, and thence to the West Indies (this was Bligh’s successful bread-fruit voyage); then he was in the Bellerophon, and was present at Lord Howe’s victory, “the glorious 1st of June.”  Two months later he left in the Reliance for Sydney.

The surgeon of the Reliance was George Bass.  From his boyhood Bass wanted to be a sailor, but was apprenticed, sorely against his will, to a Boston apothecary.  His father was a farmer at Sleaford, in Lincolnshire; but his mother was early left a widow.  The lad served his apprenticeship, duly walked the hospitals, and his mother spent most of her small substance in starting him in business as a village apothecary in his native county.  Then, like so many before and since his time, unable to overcome his first infatuation, he threw all his shore affairs to the wind and obtained an appointment to the Reliance.

Governor Hunter, it will be remembered, took a keen interest in the exploration of Australia, and he had for some time suspected the existence of a strait between Van Diemen’s Land and the main continent.  Full of desire for adventure and tired of the routine life of a penal settlement, Flinders and Bass, soon after they landed in the colony, found a new occupation in the pursuit of fresh discoveries, and Hunter willingly lent them such poor equipment as the limited resources of the colony afforded.

A month after the arrival of the Reliance at Sydney the two friends set to work, and in an eight-foot boat, which they appropriately named the Tom Thumb, went poking in and out along the coast-line, making discoveries of the greatest local value.  Then began work destined to be of world-wide importance.