PREFACE.

THE rapidly-increasing importance to which the English Colonies in
Australia have now arrived, rendering every subject connected with that
extensive continent of the greatest interest, whether in respect to its
geography, or the extraordinary assemblage of its animal and vegetable
productions, has induced me to publish such parts of my Journal as may be
useful to accompany the Atlas of the Charts of the Coast recently
published by the Board of Admiralty.

One of the results of this voyage has been the occupation of Port
Cockburn, between Melville and Bathurst Islands on the North Coast, and
the formation of an establishment there which cannot fail to be
productive of the greatest benefit to our mercantile communications with
the Eastern Archipelago, as well as to increase the influence and power
of the mother country in the South Pacific and Indian Oceans; and in
contemplating this new extension of her possessions*, I cannot avoid
recalling to mind a curious and prophetic remark of Burton, who, in
alluding to the discoveries of the Spanish navigator Ferdinando de Quiros
(Anno 1612), says: "I would know whether that hungry Spaniard's discovery
of Terra Australis Incognita, or Magellanica, be as true as that of
Mercurius Britannicus, or his of Utopia, or his of Lucinia. And yet, in
likelihood, it may be so; for without all question, it being extended
from the tropick of Capricorn to the circle Antarctick, and lying as it
doth in the temperate zone, cannot chuse but yeeld in time some
flourishing kingdoms to succeeding ages, as America did unto the
Spaniards."** Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, Part 2 Section 2 Number 3.

(*Footnote. The distance between Melville Island and Hobart Town in Van