the Army visited her in Newgate, heard the details of her life, and for
that time departed. The next day he returned, and told the gentleman who
keeps the prison that he had procured her pardon, at the same time
requesting that she should not be apprized of the circumstances. The next
day he returned with his carriage, and took off the poor woman, who
almost expired with gratitude.")

To return to the discovery cruise: on January 5th, at seven in the
evening, Bass's whaleboat turned into Westernport, between the bold
granite headland of Cape Wollamai, on Phillip Island, and Point Griffith
on the mainland. The discovery of this port, now the seat of a naval base
for the Commonwealth, was a splendid crown to a remarkable voyage. "I
have named the place," Bass wrote, "from its relative situation to every
other known harbour on the coast, Western Port. It is a large sheet of
water, branching out into two arms, which end in wide flats of several
miles in extent, and it was not until we had been here some days that we
found it to be formed by an island, and to have two outlets to the sea,
an eastern and western passage."

Twelve days were spent in the harbour. The weather was bad; and to this
cause in the main we may attribute the paucity of the observations made,
and the defective account given of the port itself. It contains two
islands: Phillip Island, facing the strait, and French Island, the larger
of the two, lying between Phillip Island and the mainland. Bass was not
aware that this second island was not part of the mainland. Its existence
was first determined by the Naturaliste, one of the ships of Baudin's
French expedition, in 1802.

Bass's men had great difficulty in procuring good water. He considered
that there was every appearance of an unusual drought in the country.