Loading your reading…

Discoveries in Australia, Volume 1.: With an Account of the Coasts and Rivers Explored and Surveyed During; The Voyage of H.M.S. Beagle, in the Years 1837-38-39-40-41-42-43.; By Command of the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty. Also a Narrative; Of Captain Owen Stanley's Visits to the Islands in the Arafura Sea.Stokes, John Lort

History

Discoveries in Australia, Volume 1.: With an Account of the Coasts and Rivers Explored and Surveyed During; The Voyage of H.M.S. Beagle, in the Years 1837-38-39-40-41-42-43.; By Command of the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty. Also a Narrative; Of Captain Owen Stanley's Visits to the Islands in the Arafura Sea.

Name: Discoveries in Australia, Volume 1.: With an Account of the Coasts and Rivers Explored and Surveyed During; The Voyage of H.M.S. Beagle, in the Years 1837-38-39-40-41-42-43.; By Command of the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty. Also a Narrative; Of Captain Owen Stanley's Visits to the Islands in the Arafura Sea.
Author: Stokes, John Lort

Stokes, John Lort

Australia -- Description and travel; Australia -- Discovery and exploration; Natural history -- Australia

REPTILES. PLATE 4.
Gonionotus plumbeus.
W. Wing Litho. C. Hullmandel's Patent.


INSECTS.

INSECTS. PLATE 1. FIGURES 1, 1a, 1b and 1c. Megacephala Australasiae,
Hope.

INSECTS. PLATE 1. FIGURES 2 and 2a. Aenigma cyanipenne, Hope.

INSECTS. PLATE 1. FIGURES 3, 3a, 3b, 3c, 3d, 3e and 3f. Calloodes
grayianus, White.

INSECTS. PLATE 1. FIGURES 4, and 4a. Biphyllocera kirbyana, White.

INSECTS. PLATE 1. FIGURE 5. Cetonia (Diaphonia) notabilis.

INSECTS. PLATE 1. FIGURE 6. Stigmodera elegantula.

INSECTS. PLATE 1. FIGURE 7. Stigmodera erythrura.

INSECTS. PLATE 1. FIGURE 8. Stigmodera saundersii, Hope.

INSECTS. PLATE 1. FIGURES 9, 9a, and 9b. Clerus ? obesus.


...



CHAPTER 1.1. INTRODUCTION.

Objects of the Voyage.
The Beagle commissioned.
Her former career.
Her first Commander.
Instructions from the Admiralty and the Hydrographer.
Officers and Crew.
Arrival at Plymouth.
Embark Lieutenants Grey and Lushington's Exploring Party.
Chronometric Departure.
Farewell glance at Plymouth.
Death of King William the Fourth.

For more than half a century, the connection between Great Britain and
her Australian possessions has been one of growing interest; and men of
the highest eminence have foreseen and foretold the ultimate importance
of that vast continent, over which, within the memory of living man, the
roving savage held precarious though unquestioned empire.

Of the Australian shores, the North-western was the least known, and
became, towards the close of the year 1836, a subject of much
geographical speculation. Former navigators were almost unanimous in
believing that the deep bays known to indent a large portion of this
coast, received the waters of extensive rivers, the discovery of which
would not only open a route to the interior, but afford facilities for
colonizing a part of Australia, so near our East Indian territories, as
to render its occupation an object of evident importance.

His Majesty's Government therefore determined to send out an expedition
to explore and survey such portions of the Australian coasts as were
wholly or in part unknown to Captains Flinders and King.

H.M. SLOOP BEAGLE.

Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.

No reviews yet