Page:A Voyage to Terra Australis Volume 2.djvu/307

Port Jackson.]

third volume of my log book and journal having been lost in the events which succeeded the decay of the Investigator, I have had recourse to a memorandum book and to officers journals to supply the dates and leading facts contained in the first three chapters following; fortunately, my bearings and the astronomical observations taken by lieutenant Flinders and myself were preserved, as also were the rough charts, with one exception; so that there are few cases where this department of the voyage will have materially suffered. There are, however, many circumstances related in these chapters, which either do not enter at all, or are slightly mentioned in the officers journals; for these, my public papers and copies of letters have principally furnished materials, and a tolerably faithful memory has supplied the rest. It seemed necessary to explain this, that the reader may know to what the deficiencies and abridgments in some