The story of Captain Bligh and the seizure of the Bounty by his mutinous seamen is known to every one. On both his voyages he had to traverse the north coast of Australia, and in going out in his first voyage, he touched at Adventure Bay, in Tasmania. To make his part in Australian discovery the clearer, it may be as well to state the occasion of his voyages, and the order in which they took place. The representations which Captain Cook had made of the value of the bread-fruit and other fruit trees of the South Sea islands, induced the British government to send out Lieutenant William Bligh in the ship Bounty, to Tahiti, to convey thence a collection of such trees to our West India islands. Bligh, who had already visited those islands with Captain Cook, sailed from Spithead on the 23rd of December, 1787, and reached his destination on the 26th of October, 1788. Thus a voyage which may now be made in a couple of months, then required ten.

On his way out, Bligh put into Van Diemen's Land, where, in Adventure Bay, he planted a number of European fruit trees, as already observed and left an inscription, stating when and by whom this was done. These were seen in a flourishing condition by the French admiral, D'Entrecasteaux, in 1792.