Flinders for a time continued his successful career. He visited England, and was raised to the rank of lieutenant, and he was authorised to proceed with his surveys in a vessel called the Investigator. A passport was obtained for him from the French Government, exempting him from capture during the time of war. At the same time, however, the French Government sent out an expedition under M. Baudin. With characteristic energy, Flinders did his work in advance of his French rival, who was driven by scurvy to Sydney. Flinders was returning home when the state of his rotten vessel forced him to put into the Mauritius, which then belonged to France. Here, despite his passport, his ship was seized, and he was thrown into prison. M. Baudin called at the Mauritius soon afterwards, and he is accused by history of a great treachery. Certainly there is much that charity finds it difficult to explain in M. Baudin's conduct. It is written that he copied the charts and papers of the prisoner. This seems to be an incredible meanness; but it is certain that he connived at the detention, and that on his return to France he published a work anticipating all that Flinders could say, ignoring the labours of the prisoner, and representing himself as the great Australian discoverer of the day. [Illustration: SPLITTERS IN THE FOREST.] More than six years elapsed before Flinders was released; and, upon reaching England, he found that the discoveries he intended to announce had been given to the world, and that the public was familiar with them. Exposure, hardships, and, above all, the long weary years in the French prison, had all told upon him. He set to work to bring out his book and his charts, and just managed to complete his task, but sank immediately afterwards. It is a mournful chapter. But the fame of Flinders survives and is growing. In Australian annals no name is more justly honoured. Very soon the colonists began to push inland from their settlements on the coast, feeling their way, and gradually becoming acquainted with the novel features of their new abode. There was great joy when, after many endeavours, a Sydney party discovered a pass through the extraordinary precipices of the Blue Mountains, which had long hemmed in the infant colony. The adventures of Oxley, who thought that he was stopped by an inland sea, of Sturt, who nearly perished in the Central Desert, and of Mitchell, who opened up the Western District of Victoria, have already been incidentally mentioned in these pages.