the North-West Coast, to which the name of Cygnet Bay has been attached:
of this place he gives a faithful and correct account, particularly with
respect to its productions, and the savage and degraded state of its
inhabitants: the same navigator afterwards (in 1699) visited the West and
North-west Coasts in His Majesty's ship Roebuck, in the description of
which he has not only been very minute and particular, but, as far as we
could judge, exceedingly correct.

Within the last fifty years the labours of Cook, Vancouver, Bligh,
D'Entrecasteaux, Flinders, and Baudin have gradually thrown a
considerable light upon this extraordinary continent, for such it may be
called. Of these and other voyages that were made during the 17th and
18th centuries to various parts of its coasts, an account is given by the
late Captain Flinders, in his introduction to the Investigator's voyage;
in which, and in that able and valuable work of the late Rear-Admiral
Burney, A Chronological Account of Discoveries in the South Sea and
Pacific Ocean, the history of its progressive discovery is amply
detailed.

It was intended that the whole line of the Australian Coast should have
been examined and surveyed by Captain Flinders; but the disgraceful and
unwarrantable detention of this officer at the Mauritius by the French
Governor, General Decaen, prevented the completion of this project.
Captain Flinders had, however, previously succeeded in making a most
minute and elaborate survey of the whole extent of the South coast,
between Cape Leeuwin and Bass Strait; of the East Coast, from Cape Howe
to the Northumberland Islands; of the passage through Torres Strait; and
of the shores of the Gulf of Carpentaria.

The French expedition, under Commodore Baudin, had in the mean time