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100 only from the great southern ocean. In the sloop, Bass and Flinders completely circumnavigated the coasts of Van Diemen's Land which previous navigators had declared to be part of the continent, returning in three months with an interesting account of the survey. Unhappily, Bass died shortly after this period, and Flinders was left almost alone to pursue his discoveries; but his merits as a scientific explorer had now become recognized. In 1801 he was furnished by the Government with a vessel fully equipped for a systematic exploration of the Australian coasts, and comprising among its voyagers an astronomer, a botanist, a mineralogist, and other scientific persons. In the course of this expedition he encountered a great variety of interesting adventures; meeting with shipwreck, but saving his journal and other precious records of the voyage. His chief misfortune occurred after his labours in completing the discovery of the vast continent of Australia were ended. During his absence war had again broken out with France, a fact of which Flinders was ignorant. Calling at the island of Mauritius, on his return to England, for water and provisions, the French governor of that island meanly insisted on detaining him a prisoner, on the trifling ground that his passport related to the "Investigator," the vessel in which he had set sail from England, and not to the "Cumberland," in which he was returning. On this miserable pretext the unfortunate discoverer was detained in an irksome captivity for six years and a half. A narrative of these voyages, and of the hardships thus inflicted on him, were published by him, in two large volumes, in 1814. Flinders was the first to suggest the name of Australia