The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders, R.N./Chapter 1 BIRTH AND
ORIGINS Matthew Flinders was the third of the triad of great
English sailors by whom the principal part of Australia was
revealed. A poet of our own time, in a line of singular
felicity, has described it as the "last sea-thing dredged by
sailor Time from Space;" and the piecemeal, partly mysterious,
largely accidental dragging from the depths of the unknown of a
land so immense and bountiful makes a romantic chapter in
geographical history. All the great seafaring peoples
contributed something towards the result. The Dutch especially
evinced their enterprise in the pursuit of precise information
about the southern Terra Incognita, and the nineteenth century
was well within its second quarter before the name New Holland,
which for over a hundred years had borne testimony to their
adventurous pioneering, gave place in general and geographical
literature to the more convenient and euphonious designation
suggested by Flinders himself, Australia. But,