This I tasted; but, watching an opportunity to spit it out when he should not be looking, I perceived him doing precisely the same thing with our biscuit, whose taste was probably no more agreeable to him, than his whale was to me." The native watched the commencement of Flinders' trigonometrical operations, "with indifference, if not contempt," and after a little while left the party, "apparently satisfied that from people who could thus occupy themselves seriously there was nothing to be apprehended." It was not until November 1st that the Norfolk sailed from the Furneaux Islands on the flood-tide westward.

The intervening time had been occupied with detailed exploring and surveying work.

Soundings and observations were made, capes, islands and inlets were charted and named.
The part of Flinders' narrative dealing with these phases abounds in detail, noted with the most painstaking particularity.

Such fulness does not make attractive literature for the reader who takes up a book of travel for amusement.

But it was highly important to record these details at the time of the publication of Flinders' book, when the coasts and seas of which he wrote were very little known; and it has to be remembered that he wrote as a scientific navigator, setting down the results of his work with completeness and precision for those interested in his subject, not as a caterer for popular literary entertainment.