amidst an uncommon combination of perplexities and dangers, he traced this coast near two thousand miles, from the 38 deg. of south latitude, cross the tropic, to its northern extremity, within 10 deg. 1/2 of the equinoctial, where it was found to join the lands already explored by the Dutch, in several voyages from their Asiatic settlements, and to which they have given the name of New Holland.  Those discoveries made in the last century, before Tasman’s voyage, had traced the north and the west coasts of this land; and Captain Cook, by his extensive operations on its east side, left little to be done toward completing the full circuit of it.  Between Cape Hicks, in latitude 38 deg., where his examination of this coast began, and that part of Van Diemen’s Land, from whence Tasman took his departure, was not above fifty-five leagues.  It was highly probable, therefore, that they were connected; though Captain Cook cautiously says, that he could not determine whether his New South Wales, that is, the east coast of New Holland, joins to Van Diemen’s Land, or no.  But what was thus left undetermined by the operations of his first voyage, was, in the course of his second, soon cleared up; Captain Furneaux, in the Adventure, during his separation from the Resolution (a fortunate separation as it thus turned out) in 1773, having explored Van Diemen’s Land, from its southern point, along the east coast, far beyond Tasman’s station, and on to the latitude 38 deg., where Captain Cook’s examination of it in 1770 had commenced.

It is no longer, therefore, a doubt, that we have now a full knowledge of the whole circumference of this vast body of land, this fifth part of the world (if I may so speak), which our late voyages have discovered to be of so amazing a magnitude, that, to use Captain Cook’s words, it is of a larger extent than any other country in the known world, that does not bear the name of a continent.[26]

[Footnote 26:  What the learned editor asserts here, as to the full knowledge acquired by the voyages to which he alludes, must be restricted, as Captain Flinders very properly remarks, to the general extent of the vast region explored.  It will not apply to the particular formation of its coasts, for this plain reason, that the chart accompanying the work, of which he was writing the introduction, represents much of the south coast as totally unknown.  It is necessary to mention also, that what he says immediately before, in allusion to the discoveries made by Captain Furaeaux, must submit to correction.  That officer committed some errors, owing, it would appear, to the imperfection of preceding accounts; and he left undetermined the interesting question as to the existence of a connection betwixt Van Diemen’s Land and New South Wales.  The opinion which he gave as to this point, on very insufficient data certainly, viz. that there is “no strait between them, but a very deep bay,” has been most satisfactorily disproved, by the discovery of the extensive passage which bears the name of Flinders’s friend, Mr Bass, the enterprising gentleman that accomplished it.—­E.]