Mungo Park's drowning agony in the African river he had discovered, but which he was not to live to describe; Clapperton's perishing of fever on the banks of the great lake, in the heart of the same continent, which was afterwards to be rediscovered and described by other explorers; Franklin's perishing in the snow--it might be after he had solved the long-sought problem of the North-west Passage--are among the most melancholy events in the history of enterprise and genius.
The case of Flinders the navigator, who suffered a six years' imprisonment in the Isle of France, was one of peculiar hardship.

In 1801, he set sail from England in the INVESTIGATOR, on a voyage of discovery and survey, provided with a French pass, requiring all French governors [21notwithstanding that England and France were at war] to give him protection and succour in the sacred name of science.

In the course of his voyage he surveyed great part of Australia, Van Diemen's Land, and the neighbouring islands.

The INVESTIGATOR, being found leaky and rotten, was condemned, and the navigator embarked as passenger in the PORPOISE for England, to lay the results of his three years' labours before the Admiralty.

On the voyage home the PORPOISE was wrecked on a reef in the South Seas, and Flinders, with part of the crew, in an open boat, made for Port Jackson, which they safely reached, though distant from the scene of the wreck not less than 750 miles.