It was intended that the whole line of the Australian. Coast should have been examined and surveyed-by Captain Flinders; but 'the disgraceful and unwarrantable detention of this officer at the Mauritius by the French Governor, General Decaen, prevented the completion of this project. Captain Flinders had, however, previously succeeded in making a most minute and elaborate survey of the whole extent of the South coast, between Cape Leeuwin and Bass' Strait; of the East Coast, from Cape Howe to the Northumberland Islands; of the passage through Torres Strait; and of the shores of the Gulf of Carpentaria.
The French expedition, under Commodore Baudin, had in the mean time visited some few parts of the West Coast, and skirted the islands Which front the North-west Coast, without landing upon, and indeed scarcely seeing, any part of the main land. The whole of the north, the north-
