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Updated: June 14, 2025
Freycinet, the man who was not there, and whose narrative was not published till thirteen years after the voyage, has further information to give us. The book containing these descriptive words was, the reader will recollect, published in 1815. Now, Flinders' volumes, A Voyage to Terra Australis, were published in 1814.
But suddenly, the note of Grallina Australis, the call of cockatoos, or the croaking of frogs, is heard, and hopes are bright again; water is certainly at hand; the spur is applied to the flank of the tired beast, which already partakes in his rider's anticipations, and quickens his pace and a lagoon, a creek, or a river, is before him.
King George's Sound being chosen as the place to prepare themselves for the examination of the south coast of Terra Australis, they anchored off Point Possession, on the south side of the entrance to Princess Royal Harbour, previous to wind and water being favourable for entering the harbour to refit and procure wood and fresh water.
Such was the end of this expedition, which has been always considered as the clearest and most exact that was ever made for the discovery of the Terra Australis Incognita, from whence that chart and map was laid down in the pavement of the stadt-house at Amsterdam, as is before mentioned.
Longitude by chronometer was to come half a century after Dampier was in his grave, and such charts as he possessed did little more than indicate the existence of Terra Australis. The Portuguese, Spanish, and Dutch maps were not easy for Englishmen to procure, and all that Dampier has to say on the matter is:
On August 23d the lowest temperature was recorded, -59°. The aurora australis, corresponding to the northern lights of the Arctic, was observed frequently and in all directions and forms. This phenomenon changed very rapidly, but, except in certain cases, was not very intensive. On August 24th the sun reappeared. The winter had ended.
"I do not know that the language of any two parts of Terra Australis, however near, has been found to be entirely the same; for even at Botany Bay, Port Jackson, and Broken Bay, not only the dialect, but many words are radically different; and this confirms one part of an observation, the truth of which seems to be generally admitted, that although similarity of language in two nations proves their origin to be the same, yet dissimilarity of languages is no proof of the contrary position.
A small pampa rodent worthy of notice is the Cavia australis, called cui in the vernacular from its voice: a timid, social, mouse-coloured little creature, with a low gurgling language, like running babbling waters; in habits resembling its domestic pied relation the guinea pig.
The discovery of America by Christopher Columbus in 1492 had given rise to a theory that a vast continent known as Terra Australis existed in the South, and Portuguese and Spanish ships had made report from time to time of this southern land. It was to confirm or dispel this belief that the voyage of Dirk Hartog was made.
His followers were similarly, but not so strikingly, clad, the women wearing feathers in their hair, and a peculiar leaf from a tree, which looked like white satin. Altogether this race appeared to be possessed of a far higher state of civilization than the people in Terra Australis. They were, however, openly addicted to cannibalism, and made no secret of this abominable practice.
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