But, whatever may have been his faults,
arising from his ungovernable temper and arbitrary disposition, the
statements of his military traducers reflecting on his personal courage
may be dismissed with the contempt they deserve.
CHAPTER XII.
OTHER NAVAL PIONEERS, AND THE PRESENT MARITIME STATE OF
AUSTRALIA--CONCLUSION.
Long after Bligh, the last naval governor, was in his grave, the pioneer
work of naval officers went on; and if not the chief aid to the settlement
of Australia, it played an important part in its development. Begun at the
foundation of the colony, when the marine explorer did his work in open
boats; carried on, as the settlement grew, in locally built fore-and-aft
vessels down to the present, when navigating officers are year in, year
out, cruising "among the South Sea Islands," or on the less known parts of
the northern and western Australian coast-line, surveying in up-to-date
triple-expansion-engined steam cruisers or in steam surveying yachts, the
work of chart-making has always been, and still is, done so thoroughly as
to command the admiration of all who understand its [Sidenote: 1793]
its meaning, and withal so modestly that the shipmaster, whose Admiralty
charts are perhaps little less or even more valuable to him than his
Bible, scarcely ever thinks, if he knows, how they are made.
In the earliest days of the colony, Phillip and Hunter were land as well
as sea explorers; Dawes and Tench, of the Marines, and Quartermaster
Hacking, of the _Sirius_, in 1793 and 1794, made the first attempts to
cross the Blue Mountains.
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