At the cost of L250, Sir John Franklin erected an obelisk on the rock of
Stamford Hill, Port Lincoln, with the following inscription:--
This place,
from which the gulf and its shores
were first surveyed,
on the 26th of Feb., 1802, by
MATTHEW FLINDERS, R. N..
commander of H.M.S. _Investigator_,
and the discoverer of the country now called South Australia,
was
on 12th Jan., 1841,
with the sanction of Lieut.-Colonel GAWLER, K.H.,
then Governor of the Colony, then set apart for,
and in the first year of the
Government of Captain G. GREY,
adorned with this monument,
to the perpetual memory of the illustrious navigator,
his honoured commander,
by JOHN FRANKLIN, Captain R.N., K.C.H., K.R., Lt.-Governor of
Van Diemen's Land.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 1: The following is its title:--_Journal of Discovery, by me,
Abel Jans Tasman, of a Voyage from Batavia for making discoveries of the
unknown South Land_, 1642.--_Burney's Chronological History_, 1813.]
[Footnote 2: Discovered in the year 1505, by Don Pedro Mascarequas, a
Spanish navigator: he gave it the name of "Cerne." It was uninhabited,
and destitute of every species of quadruped. In 1598 it was visited by
the Dutch Admiral Van Neck, who finding it unoccupied gave it its
present name, in honor of Maurice, Prince of Holland. In 1601 a
Frenchman was found on the island by a Dutch captain. He had been left
by an English vessel, and had remained two years subsisting on turtle
and dates: his understanding was impaired by his long solitude. The
Dutch had a small fort, when it was visited by Tasman, which is
represented in the drawings that illustrated his journal. The Dutch
afterwards abandoned the island, and it has passed through many changes,
until it was conquered by Great Britain.--_Grant's History of the
Mauritius._]
[Footnote 3: Probably their fires: had they seen them, they could not
have fallen into error respecting their height.]
[Footnote 4: "The same romantic little rock, with its fringe of grey
ironstone shingle, still shelters itself under the castellated cliffs of
trap rock, on its northern and southern horns; embosomed in its
innermost recesses by a noble forest, whose green shades encroach upon
the verge of the ocean. It is less than half-a-mile across, and nearer
its northern than its southern extremity, the sea has cast up a key of
large grey rounded ironstone, which interrupts the equal curve of the
beach, and doubtless marks the spot where the
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