Important local discoveries were made by the young explorers, and their skill and courage earned for them a better equipment for further exploration. A whale-boat provisioned for six weeks, and a crew of six, were placed at the disposal of Bass in order that he might discover whether Van Diemen's Land was joined to the mainland or whether there was a strait between. Cook had declared that there was no strait. Flinders now tells the story of his friend's triumphant success in finding the straits that now bear his name. He tells how Bass found the coast turning westward exposed to the billows of a great ocean, of the low sandy shore, of the spacious harbour which "from its relative position to the hitherto known parts of the coasts was called Port Western." His provisions were now at an end and, though he was keen to make a survey of his new discovery, he was obliged to return. This voyage of six hundred miles in an open boat on dangerous and unknown shores is one of the most remarkable on record. It added another three hundred miles of known coast-line, and showed that the shores of New Holland were divided from Van Diemen's Land. So highly did the colonists appreciate this voyage of discovery that the whale-boat in which Bass sailed was long preserved as a curiosity. A small boat of twenty-five tons, provisioned for twelve weeks, was now put at the disposal of the two friends, Flinders and Bass, to complete the survey of Van Diemen's Land, and in October 1798 they sailed for the south. With gales and strong winds blowing across the channel now known as Bass Strait, they made their way along the coast--the northern shores of Van Diemen's Land--till they found a wide inlet. Here they found a quantity of black swans, which they ate with joy, and also kangaroos, mussels, and oysters. This inlet they called Port Dalrymple, after the late hydrographer to the Admiralty in England. On 9th December, still coasting onward, they passed Three-Hummock Island and then a whole cluster of islands, to which, "in honour of His Excellency the Governor of New South Wales, I gave the title of Hunter's Isles." And now a long swell was noticed from the south-west. "It broke heavily upon a small reef and upon all the western shores, but, although it was likely to prove troublesome and perhaps dangerous, Mr. Bass and myself hailed it with joy and mutual congratulation, as announcing the completion of our long-wished-for discovery of a passage into the southern Indian Ocean."