twenty-one years of age. His father was a surgeon at Donington, a village
in Lincolnshire.

[Illustration: GEORGE BASS. From a miniature. From "The Historical
Records of New South Wales" [Sydney, 1889, etc.]. _To face p._ 168.]

_Robinson Crusoe_, so he himself tells us, sent him to sea, and his
departure from home was soon followed by that of his brother Samuel.
Matthew served first in the _Scipio_ under Pasley; then he accompanied
Bligh in the _Providence_ to Tahiti, and thence to the West Indies (this
was Bligh's successful bread-fruit voyage); then he was in the
_Bellerophon_, and was present at Lord Howe's victory, "the glorious 1st
of June." Two months later he left in the _Reliance_ for Sydney.

The surgeon of the _Reliance_ was George Bass. From his boyhood Bass
wanted to be a sailor, but was apprenticed, sorely against his will, to a
Boston apothecary. His father was a farmer at Sleaford, in Lincolnshire;
but his mother was early left a widow. The lad served his apprenticeship,
duly walked the hospitals, and his mother spent most of her small
substance in starting him in business as a village apothecary in his
native county. Then, like so many before and since his time, unable to
overcome his first infatuation, he threw all his shore affairs to the wind
and obtained an appointment to the _Reliance_.

Governor Hunter, it will be remembered, took a keen interest in the
exploration of Australia, and he had for some time suspected the
existence of a strait between Van Diemen's Land and the main continent.
Full of desire for adventure and tired of the routine life of a penal
settlement, Flinders and Bass, soon after they landed in the colony, found
a new occupation in the pursuit of fresh discoveries, and Hunter willingly