Page:Early History of the Colony of Victoria by Francis Peter Labilliere.djvu/15

Rh also written out for them to Sydney—namely, Bass's original journal of his whale-boat expedition to Western Port, and the report made by Surveyor-General Grimes of his investigation of Port Phillip Bay, when sent from Sydney to examine that harbour in 1802. The leading facts of the former are doubtless given by Flinders, in his "Terra Australis;" whose chart of the bay is completed from that of Grimes. But, as my desire has been to record the statements of the first explorers themselves, not secondary recitals of them, however complete and accurate, I regret being unable to give the exact words of Bass and Grimes. I, however, rejoice at the fact that the report of the latter has recently been found in Sydney, although unable to set it out in these pages, and hope that some one will also be more fortunate than I have been in discovering Bass's original journal—the only important document now wanting to complete the authentic history of discovery in Victoria.

The facts contained in these pages could have been compressed into much smaller space, by merely giving the substance of the documents set out, with references to where they may be found; but then the work would be without its chief value as an authority,—most of the documents in it having never before been printed.

My desire being to produce an accurate and complete work on my native Colony, I now present this in the form which strikes me as likely to make it most useful as a permanent historical record. Its merit consists, not in my attempt to tell the tale of exploration and colonization in my own language, but in letting the explorers and colonizers speak in theirs. History would be more accurate