Page:The three colonies of Australia.djvu/61

 was one De Caen, a low, malignant, envious, insolent wretch, who, to the infinite disgust of many of his countrymen and companions in arms, availed himself of the misfortune which had thrown Flinders into his power to vent his spite on a nation he detested.

De Caen seized the Cumberland, took possession of the charts, journals, and log-books, and detained Captain Flinders for six years, during which period, in spite of the representations of the French Admiral Linois, and of many of the most respectable colonists, he treated him with every kind of cruelty and indignity; and, after evading repeated orders for his release, dismissed him as unceremoniously as he had seized him, detaining, however one log-book, which Flinders was never able to recover. In the meantime appeared an account of Captain Baudin's voyages—the Captain Baudin who had received at Port Jackson every kind of attention and information. In this work, accompanied by an atlas, the discoveries of Flinders and Bass were appropriated wholesale, and renamed.

Baudin had made about fifty leagues of discovery, and claimed nine hundred leagues, part of which had been surveyed by the Dutch a century before his time.

Flinders reached England in 1810, broken in health, but his spirit of duty unimpaired. Under the regulations of the service the time he had passed in unjust imprisonment could not count in his professional employment. At length he petitioned the Prince Regent for promotion, as an act of grace; but his prayer was refused, and neither his widow nor his daughter were able to obtain the pension to which his eminent services formed so strong a claim.

Flinders devoted the last days of his broken health and spirits to preparing his book and maps for the press—an admirable work, which has been the foundation of every subsequent exploration and colonisation in Australia, and died on the 14th of July, 1814, on the very day his "Account of a Voyage to Terra Australis" was published.

Of Flinders' noble fellow-labourer in the cause of discovery—George Bass—we were unable to find any published memorials, but while the first edition of this work was passing through the hands of the reader for the press, a native of Lincoln, he wrote to a relative and obtained the following interesting particulars:—

"The mother of Mr. George Bass lived with them (the Calder family) fourteen years, and died with them. Her son and only child, George Bass, was born at As worthy, near Sleaford, where his father had a farm, and died when he was a boy, The widow and son afterwards went to reside at Boston. From his boyhoood he showed a