n making discoveries in these regions,
were ignorant of its having been passed. Several navigators have sailed
through Torres's Strait, as it has been justly enough named, since the
time of Cook, and have improved our acquaintance with its geography. Of
these may be mentioned Lieutenant (afterwards Rear-Admiral) Bligh, in
1789; Captain (afterwards Admiral) Edwards, in 1791; Bligh, a second
time, accompanied by Lieutenant Portlock, in 1792; Messrs Bampton and
Alt, in 1793; and Captain Flinders, in 1802-3. The labours of the
last-mentioned gentleman in this quarter surpass, in utility and
interest, those of his predecessors, and, if he had accomplished nothing
else, would entitle his name to be ranked amongst the benefactors of
geography. What mind is so insensible as not to regret, that after years
of hardship and captivity, the very day which presented the public with
the memorial of his services and sufferings, deprived him of the
possibility of reaping their reward?--E.]

6. One more discovery, for which we are indebted to Captain Carteret, as
similar in some degree to that last mentioned, may properly succeed it,
in this enumeration. Dampier, in sailing round what was supposed to be
part of the coast of New Guinea, discovered it to belong to a separate
island, to which he gave the name of New Britain. But that the land
which he named New Britain should be subdivided again into two separate
large islands, with many smaller intervening, is a point of geographical
information, which, if ever traced by any of the earliest navigators of
the South Pacific, had not been handed down to the present age: And its
having been ascertained by Captain Carteret, deserves to be mentioned as
a discovery, in the strictest sense of the word; a discovery of the
utmost importance to navigation. St George's Channel, through which his
ship found a way, between New Britain and New Ireland, from the Pacific
into the Indian Ocean, to use the Captain's own words, "is a much better
and shorter passage, whether from the eastward or westward, than round
all the islands and lands to the northward."[28]

[Footnote 28: The position of the Solomon Islands, Mendana's celebrated
discovery, will no longer remain a matter in debate amongst geographers,
Mr Dalrymple having, on the most satisfactory evidence, proved, that
they are the cluster of islands which comprises what has since been
called New Britain, New Ireland, &c. The great light thrown on that