Page:History of Adelaide and vicinity.djvu/32

6 on land for any of the wrecked men who might have got on shore, but not one was seen. The sharks that were observed round about suggested that it was unlikely that any would be successful in such an effort. Flinders commemorated the unfortunate party by naming islands after each member, and the adjacent headland he named Cape Catastrophe. An inscription was rudely carved on a copper plate, and set upon a post at the head of the inlet, which was named Memory Cove. Flinders wrote a panegyric on Thistle, and then sailed onwards. Scores of years afterwards, bits of the copper plate were collected, and at present ornament the entrance hall to the Public Library and Museum of South Australia.

Flinders now proceeded to determine the extent of the watery expanse towards the north-east. He penetrated the bays and inlets, and rounded the jutting headlands and promontories. In the warmth of March and April days, and the cool of the nights, his vessel carried him up the west coast of Spencer Gulf and down the eastern shore. After leaving the scene of the recent calamity, he entered the lovely harbor of Port Lincoln, which William Westall sketched most happily. Prominent mainland features and islands in the Gulf were named, and the disappointment of the navigators can be imagined when they found that the gulf, which had promised so much, terminated in a shallow creek and forbidding mud flats. Sailing out of Spencer Gulf, Flinders named Cape Spencer and three islands, the Althorpes, and then stood to the south-south-west. A large island which lay in that direction was called Kangaroo Island, from the great number of kangaroos that were shot on shore by a landing party. The highest point on the mainland, seen to the north-east from Kangaroo Island, was named Mount Lofty, and the sheet of water between Kangaroo Island and the mainland, Investigator Strait, after the ship. The second large stretch of water leading to the north was designated Gulf St Vincent, and the land between the two gulfs Yorke Peninsula, after the Right Hon. C. P. Yorke. Flinders says little of the Gulf St. Vincent, whereon the City of Adelaide is built. His inspection of it was cursory, rapid, and not interesting. "The nearest part of the coast" (eastward), he writes, "was distant three leagues, mostly low, and composed of sand and rock, with a few small trees scattered over it; but a few miles inland, where the back mountains rise, the country was well clothed with forest timber, and had a fertile appearance."

Flinders did not linger on this part of his voyage, and, after leaving the theatre upon the stage of which our narrative proceeds, pursued his easterly course. As though prescient of its importance, he named the channel leading to it between the eastern end of Kangaroo Island and the mainland, Backstairs Passage, with Antechamber Hay and the Pages (three small islands) close at hand. Shortly after leaving the easternmost point of Kangaroo Island astern—which he named Cape Willoughby—he met the French national ship, Le Gèographe, commanded by Captain Nicholas Baudin, devoted to exploration work. The stretch of water where they sighted each other was named by Flinders Encounter Bay to celebrate the occasion. The vessels hove to, and the commanders — representatives of conflicting nations, then actually at war, but individually engaged in corresponding peaceful scientific pursuits—visited each other, compared charts, and discoursed on their discoveries.