Terre Napoleón; a History of French Explorations and Projects in Australia

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Title: Terre Napoleón; a History of French Explorations and Projects in Australia

Author: Sir Ernest Scott

Release date: February 1, 2005 [eBook #7450]
Most recently updated: March 25, 2014

Language: English

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Credits: Produced by Sue Asscher and Col Choat

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TERRE NAPOLEÓN; A HISTORY OF FRENCH EXPLORATIONS AND PROJECTS IN AUSTRALIA ***

Produced by Sue Asscher and Col Choat

TERRE NAPOLEON.

A HISTORY OF FRENCH EXPLORATIONS
AND PROJECTS IN AUSTRALIA

ERNEST SCOTT.

WITH EIGHT ILLUSTRATIONS AND MAPS.

SECOND EDITION.

METHUEN & CO., LTD.
36 ESSEX STREET W.C.
LONDON.

FIRST PUBLISHED JULY 7TH, 1910.
SECOND EDITION 1911.

PREFACE.

The main object of this book is to exhibit the facts relative to the
expedition despatched to Australia by Napoleon Bonaparte in 1800 to 1804,
and to consider certain opinions which have been for many years current
regarding its purpose.

Until about five years ago the writer accepted without doubt the
conclusions presented by leading authorities. One has to do that in
regard to the vast mass of historical material, because, obviously,
however much disposed one may be to form one's opinions on tested facts
apart from the writings of historians, several lifetimes would not be
sufficient for a man to inquire for himself as to the truth of a bare
fraction of the conclusions with which research is concerned.

But it so happened that the writer was interested, for other reasons than
those disclosed in the following pages, in ascertaining exactly what was
done by the expedition commanded by Captain Nicolas Baudin on the coasts
which were labelled Terre Napoleon. On scrutinising the facts somewhat
narrowly, he was surprised to find that opinions accepted with
unquestioning faith began to crumble away for lack of evidence to support
them.

So much is stated by way of showing that the book has not been written to
prove a conclusion formulated a priori, but with a sincere desire that
the truth about the matter should be known. We read much in modern books
devoted to the era of the Corsican about "the Napoleonic legend." There
seems to be, just here, a little sporadic Napoleonic legend, to which
vitality has been given from quarters whence have come some heavy blows
at the larger one.

The plan adopted has been, after a preliminary sketch of the colonial
situation of Great Britain and France in the period under review, to
bring upon the scene--the Terre Napoleon coasts--the discovery ship
Investigator, despatched by the British Government at about the same time
as Napoleon's vessels were engaged upon their task, and to describe the
meeting of the two captains, Flinders and Baudin, in Encounter Bay. Next,
the coasts denominated Terre Napoleon are traversed, and an estimate is
made of the original work done by Baudin, and of the serious omissions
for which he was to blame. A second part of the subject is then entered
upon. The origin of the expedition is traced, and the ships are carefully
followed throughout their voyage, with a view to elicit whether there
was, as alleged, a political purpose apart from the scientific work for
which the enterprise was undertaken at the instance of the Institute of
France.

The two main points which the book handles are: (1) whether Napoleon's
object was to acquire territory in Australia and to found "a second
fatherland" for the French there; and (2) whether it is true, as so often
asserted, that the French plagiarised Flinders' charts for the purpose of
constructing their own. On both these points conclusions are reached
which are at variance with those commonly presented; but the evidence is
placed before the reader with sufficient amplitude to enable him to
arrive at a fair opinion on the facts, which, the author believes, are
faithfully stated.

A third point of some importance, and which is believed to be quite new,
relates to the representation of Port Phillip on the Terre Napoleon maps.
It is a curious fact that, much as has been written on the early history
of Australia, no writer, so far as the author is aware, has observed the
marked conflict of evidence between Captain Baudin and his own officers
as to that port having been seen by their discovery ships, and as to how
the representation of it on the French maps got there. Inasmuch as Port
Phillip is the most important harbour in the territory which was called
Terre Napoleon, the matter is peculiarly interesting. Yet, although the
author has consulted more than a score of volumes in which the expedition
is mentioned, or its work dealt with at some length, not one of the
writers has pointed out this sharp contradiction in testimony, still less
attempted to account for it. It is to be feared that in the writing of
Australian, as of much other history, there has been on the part of
authors a considerable amount of "taking in each other's washing."

The table of comparative chronology is designed to enable the reader to
see at a glance the dates of the occurrences described in the book, side
by side with those of important events in the world at large. It is
always an advantage, when studying a particular piece of history, to have
in mind other happenings of real consequence pertaining to the period
under review. Such a table should remind us of what Freeman spoke of as
the "unity and indivisibility of history," if it does no more.

CONTENTS.

INTRODUCTION.

A continent with a record of unruffled peace.
Causes of this variation from the usual course of history.
English and French colonisation during the Napoleonic wars.
The height of the Napoleonic empire and the entire loss of the French
colonies.
The British colonial situation during the same period.
The colony at Port Jackson in 1800.
Its defencelessness.
The French squadron in the Indian Ocean.
Rear-Admiral Linois.
The audacious exploit of Commodore Dance, and Napoleon's direction to
"take Port Jackson" in 1810.

CHAPTER 1. FLINDERS AND THE INVESTIGATOR.

The Investigator at Kangaroo Island.
Thoroughness of Flinders' work.
His aims and methods.
His explorations; the theory of a Strait through Australia.
Completion of the map of the continents.
A direct succession of great navigators: Cook, Bligh, Flinders, and
Franklin.
What Flinders learnt in the school of Cook: comparison between the
healthy condition of his crew and the scurvy-stricken company on the
French vessels.

CHAPTER 2. THE AFFAIR OF ENCOUNTER BAY.

Meeting of the Investigator and Le Geographe in Encounter Bay.
Flinders cautious.
Interview of the two captains.
Peron's evidence.
The chart of Bass Strait.
Second interview: Baudin inquisitive.
Baudin's account of his explorations.

CHAPTER 3. PORT PHILLIP.

Conflict of evidence between Baudin, Peron, and Freycinet as to whether
the French ships had sighted Port Phillip.
Baudin's statement corroborated by documents.
Examination of Freycinet's statement.
The impossibility of doing what Peron and Freycinet asserted was done.

CHAPTER 4. TERRE NAPOLEON AND ITS NOMENCLATURE.

Imprisonment of Flinders in Mauritius.
The French atlas of 1807.
The French charts and the names upon them.
Hurried publication.
The allegation that Peron acted under pressure.
Freycinet's explanations.
His failure to meet the gravest charge.
Extent of the actual discoveries of Baudin, and nature of the country
discovered.
The French names in current use on the so-called Terre Napoleon coasts.
Difficulty of identifying features to which Baudin applied names.
Freycinet's perplexities.
The new atlas of 1817.

CHAPTER 5. DID THE FRENCH USE FLINDERS' CHARTS?

Assertions commonly made as to French plagiarism of Flinders' charts.
Lack of evidence to support the charges.
General Decaen and his career.
The facts as to Flinders' charts.
The sealed trunks.
The third log-book and its contents; detention of it by Decaen, and the
reasons for his conduct.
Restoration of Flinders' papers, except the log-book and despatches.
Do Freycinet's charts show evidence of the use of Flinders' material?
How did the French obtain their chart of Port Phillip?
Peron's report to Decaen as to British intentions in the Pacific and
Indian Oceans, and the effect on his mind.
Liberation of Flinders.
Capture of Mauritius by the British.
English naval officers and the governor.
Later career of Decaen.

CHAPTER 6. THE MOTIVES OF BONAPARTE.

Did Bonaparte desire to establish French colonial dominions in Australia?
The case stated.

CHAPTER 7. GENESIS OF BAUDIN'S EXPEDITION.

Baudin's one of a series of French expeditions.
The building up of the map of Australia.
Early map-makers.
Terra Australis.
Dutch navigators.
Emmerie Mollineux's map.
Tasman and Dampier.
The Petites Lettres of Maupertuis.
De Brosses and his Histoire des Navigations aux Terres Australes.
French voyages that originated from it.
Bougainville; Marion-Dufresne; La Perouse; Bruni Dentrecasteaux.
Voyages subsequent to Baudin's.
The object of the voyages scientific and exploratory.
The Institute of France and its proposition.
Received by Bonaparte with interest.
Bonaparte's interest in geography and travel.
His authorisation of the expedition.
The Committee of the Institute and their instructions.
Fitting out of the expedition.
Le Geographe and Le Naturaliste.
The staff.
Francois Peron.
Captain Nicolas Baudin.

CHAPTER 8. EXODUS OF THE EXPEDITION.

The passports from the English Government.
Sailing of the expedition.
French interest in it.
The case of Ah Sam.
Baudin's obstinacy.
Short supplies.
The French ships on the Western Australian coast.
The Ile Lucas and its name.
Refreshment at Timor.
The English frigate Virginia.
Baudin sails south.
Shortage of water.
The French in Tasmania.
Peron among the aboriginals.
The savage and the boat.
Among native women.
A question of colour.
Separation of the ships by storm.
Baudin sails through Bass Strait, and meets Flinders.
Scurvy.
Great storms and intense suffering.
Le Geographe at Port Jackson.

CHAPTER 9. PORT JACKSON AND KING ISLAND.

Le Naturaliste at Sydney.
Boullanger's boat party.
Curious conduct of Baudin.
Le Naturaliste sails for Mauritius, but returns to Port Jackson.
Re-union of Baudin's ships.
Hospitality of Governor King.
Peron's impressions of the British settlement.
Morand, the banknote forger.
Baudin shows his charts and instructions to King.
Departure of the French ships.
Rumours as to their objects.
King's prompt action.
The Cumberland sent after them.
Acting Lieutenant Robbins at King Island.
The flag incident.
Baudin's letters to King.
His protestations.
Views on colonisation.
Le Naturaliste sails for Europe.

CHAPTER 10. RETURN OF THE EXPEDITION.

Le Geographe sails for Kangaroo Island.
Exploration of the two gulfs in the Casuarina by Freycinet.
Baudin's erratic behaviour.
Port Lincoln.
Peron among the giants.
A painful excursion.
Second visit to Timor.
Abandonment of north coast exploration.
Baudin resolves to return home.
Voyage to Mauritius.
Death of Baudin.
Treatment of him by Peron and Freycinet.
Return of Le Geographe.
Depression of the staff and crew.

CHAPTER 11. RESULTS.

Establishment of the First Empire.
Reluctance of the French Government to publish a record of the
expedition.
Report of the Institute.
The official history of the voyage authorised.
Peron's scientific work.
His discovery of Pyrosoma atlanticum.
Other scientific memoirs.
His views on the modification of species.
Geographical results.
Freycinet's charts.

CHAPTER 12. CONCLUSIONS AND CONSEQUENCES.

Further consideration of Napoleon's purposes.
What Australia owes to British sea power.
Influence of the Napoleonic wars.
Fresh points relative to Napoleon's designs.
Absence of evidence.
Consequences of suspicions of French intentions.
Promotion of settlement in Tasmania.
Tardy occupation of Port Phillip.
The Swan River Settlement.
The Westernport scheme.
Lord John Russell's claim of "the Whole" of Australia for the British.
The designs of Napoleon III.
Australia the nursling of sea power.

BIBLIOGRAPHY.

INDEX.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS AND MAPS.

LE GEOGRAPHE AND LE NATURALISTE. From the drawing in Freycinet's Atlas of
1807.

MAP OF NEW HOLLAND (AUSTRALIA). From Freycinet's Atlas of 1807.

ADMIRALTY CHART OF ENTRANCE TO PORT PHILLIP.

TRACK CHART OF LE GEOGRAPHE. From Freycinet's Atlas of 1812.

MAP OF TERRE NAPOLEON. From Freycinet's Atlas of 1807.

FRENCHMAN'S ROCK, KANGAROO ISLAND. From a photograph by Mr. Alfred
Searcy, Harbourmaster, South Australia.

GENERAL CHARLES DECAEN. After the portrait in the Library at Caen.

CAPTAIN NICOLAS BAUDIN. From an engraving.

FRANCOIS PERON. From the drawing by Lesueur.

TITLE-PAGE OF FREYCINET'S ATLAS OF CHARTS, 1812.

COMPARATIVE CHRONOLOGY.

1602. Abel Tasman born.

1603. Death of Queen Elizabeth.

1606. Voyage of Quiros; finding and naming of Austrialia del Espiritu
Santo.

1606. First charter to the Virginia Company.

1620. Pilgrim Fathers found colony of New Plymouth.

1642. Tasman's first voyage; discovery of Tasmania.

1643. Death of Louis XIII.

1644. Tasman's second voyage; exploration of northern Australia.

1649. Execution of Charles I.

1652. Birth of William Dampier.

1655. English conquest of Jamaica.

1658. Death of Oliver Cromwell.

1659. Death of Tasman.

1682. Penn founds Pennsylvania.

1683. The French found Louisiana.

1686 to 1688. Dampier's voyage in the Cygnet; anchorage in Cygnet Bay,
Western Australia.

1688. Fall of the Stuart dynasty; accession of William of Orange.

1699. Dampier's voyage in the Roebuck; anchorage in Sharks Bay.

1714. Death of Queen Anne.

1728. Birth of James Cook.

1756. Birth of Nicolas Baudin. De Brosses publishes his Histoire des
Navigations aux Terres Australes.

1759. Wolfe captures Quebec.

1765. Watt's invention of the steam-engine.

1766. Bougainville's voyage to the South Seas.

1768 to 1770. Cook's voyage in the Endeavour; discovery of Botany Bay,
Port Jackson, and eastern Australia.

1769. Charles Decaen born.

1769. Birth of Napoleon Bonaparte.

1771. Marion-Dufresne's voyage to Tasmania and New Zealand.

1773. Boston tea riots.

1774. Matthew Flinders born.

1774. Meeting of first American Congress.

1775. Francois Peron born.

1776. Declaration of Independence.

1778 to 1779. Cook's third voyage and death.

1778. Death of Chatham.

1785 to 1788. Voyage of La Perouse; call at Port Jackson.

1788. Founding of New South Wales.

1789. Mutiny of the Bounty.

1789. Washington elected first President of United States.
Fall of the Bastille.

1790. Flinders joins the Navy.

1790. Burke's Reflections on the French Revolution.

1791. Vancouver on the western Australian coast.
Dentrecasteaux's voyage to Australia.
Flinders sails with Bligh's second bread-fruit expedition.

1791. Passing of the Canada Act.

1795. Flinders' first voyage to Australia in the Reliance.

1795. Ceylon surrendered to the British by the Dutch.
Establishment of the Institute of France.

1797. Battle of Cape St. Vincent.
Battle of Camperdown.

1798. Discovery of Bass Strait and of Westernport by George Bass.
Flinders and Bass circumnavigate Tasmania in the Norfolk.

1798. Battle of the Nile.
Irish Rebellion.

1799. Bonaparte becomes First Consul of the French Republic.

1800. (May) Bonaparte authorises the despatch of Baudin's expedition.
(October) The expedition sails.
(December) Grant reaches Port Jackson in the Lady Nelson.

1800. Battle of Marengo.

1801. (May) Baudin's ships reach Australia.
(July) Flinders sails from England in the Investigator.
(August) Le Geographe reaches Timor.
(November) Baudin's ships sail from Timor to Tasmania.
(December) The Investigator reaches Australia.

1801. Battle of Copenhagen.

1802. (January) Murray discovers Port Phillip.
(February) Flinders discovers Spencer's Gulf; Murray enters Port Phillip.
(March) French ships separated by storm.
(April) Meeting of Flinders and Baudin in Encounter Bay; Flinders enters
Port Phillip.
(May) Investigator reaches Port Jackson.
(June) Baudin reaches Port Jackson.
(July) Flinders sails for Gulf of Carpentaria.
(November) French ships leave Sydney.
(December) Le Naturaliste sails for Europe; the Cumberland at King
Island; Robbins erects the British flag; Le Geographe and Casuarina sail
for Kangaroo Island.

1802. Peace of Amiens.

1803. (January) Freycinet in Spencer's and St. Vincent's Gulfs.
(June) Le Geographe again at Timor; Le Naturaliste enters Havre;
Investigator returns to Port Jackson.
(July) Baudin abandons exploration and sails for Mauritius.
(August) Flinders wrecked in the Porpoise.
Derwent River Settlement formed.
(September) Death of Baudin.
(December) Flinders calls at Mauritius in the Cumberland; is imprisoned.

1803. Sale of Louisiana by France to United States.
Renewal of the great war.

1804. Le Geographe arrives at Lorient.
Hobart Settlement formed.

1804. Napoleon becomes Emperor.

1805. Battle of Trafalgar.

1806. Napoleon signs order for release of Flinders.

1806. Death of William Pitt.

1807. Publication of first volume of Voyage de Decouvertes aux Terres
Australes, with first atlas.

1810. (July) Liberation of Flinders.
(October) Mauritius blockaded by the British.
(December) Capitulation of Mauritius; death of Peron.

1810. Napoleon marries Marie Louise.

1811. Second part of French atlas published.

1812. Publication of Freycinet atlas of charts.

1812. The retreat from Moscow.
British Naval War with U.S.A.

1814. Publication of Flinders' Voyage to Terra Australis; death of
Flinders (July).

1814. Abdication of Napoleon.

1815. Publication of volume 3 of Voyage de Decouvertes.

1815. Battle of Waterloo.

1816. Publication of volume 2 of Voyage de Decouvertes, with revised map
of Australia.

1821. Death of Napoleon.

1826. Westernport Settlement projected and abandoned.

1829. Foundation of Western Australia.

1832. Death of Decaen.

1832. English Reform Bill.

1835. Batman finds site of Melbourne.

1836. Foundation of South Australia.

1837. City of Melbourne founded.

1837. Accession of Queen Victoria.

1851. Colony of Victoria established.

1851. Louis Napoleon's coup d'etat.

1853. French annexation of New Caledonia.

1854. Crimean War.

1859. Colony of Queensland established.

1860. Lincoln, President of the United States.

TERRE NAPOLEON.

INTRODUCTION.

PART 1.

Australia is the only considerable portion of the world which has enjoyed
the blessed record of unruffled peace. On every other continent, in
nearly every other island large in area, "war's red ruin writ in flame"
has wrought its havoc, leaving evidences in many a twinging cicatrice.
Invasion, rebellion, and civil war constitute enormous elements in the
chronicles of nations; and Shelley wrote that the study of history,
though too important to be neglected, was "hateful and disgusting to my
very soul," because he found in it little more than a "record of crimes
and miseries." A map of the globe, coloured crimson as to those countries
where blood has flowed in armed conflicts between men, would present a
circling splash of red; but the vast island which is balanced on the
Tropic of Capricorn, and spreads her bulk from the tenth parallel of
south latitude to "the roaring forties," would show up white in the
spacious diagram of carnage. No foreign foe has menaced her thrifty
progress since the British planted themselves at Port Jackson in 1788;
nor have any internal broils of serious importance interrupted her
prosperous career.

This striking variation from the common fate of peoples is attributable
to three causes. First, the development of a British civilisation in
Australia has synchronised with the attainment and unimpaired maintenance
of dominant sea-power by the parent nation. The supremacy of Great
Britain upon the blue water enabled her colonies to grow to strength and
wealth under the protection of a mighty arm. Secondly, during the same
period a great change in British colonial policy was inaugurated.
Statesmen were slow to learn the lessons taught in so trenchant a fashion
by the revolt of the American colonies; but more liberal views gradually
ripened, and Lord Durham's Report on the State of Canada, issued in 1839,
occasioned a beneficent new era of self-government. The states of
Australia were soon left with no grievance which it was not within their
own power to remedy if they chose, and virtually as they chose. Thirdly,
these very powers of self-government developed in the people a signal
capacity for governing and being governed. The constitutional machinery
submitted the Executive to popular control, and made it quickly sensitive
to the public will. Authority and subjects were in sympathy, because the
subjects created the authority. Further, there was no warlike native race
in Australia, as there was in New Zealand and in South Africa, to
necessitate armed conflict. Thus security from attack, chartered
autonomy, and governing capacity, with the absence of organised
pugnacious tribes, have combined to achieve the unique result of a
continent preserved from aggression, disruption, or bloody strife for
over one hundred and twenty years.

There was a brief period, as will presently be related, when this happy
state of things was in some danger of being disturbed. It certainly would
have been impossible had not Great Britain emerged victorious from her
protracted struggle, first against revolutionary France, and later
against Napoleon, in the latter years of the eighteenth century and the
beginning of the nineteenth.

In those wars colonial possessions "became pawns in the game."* (* The
phrase is Professor Egerton's, Cambridge Modern History 9 735.) There was
no Imperialism then, with its strident note, its ebullient fervour and
flag waving. There was no national sense of pride in colonial Empire, or
general appreciation of the great potentialities of oversea possessions.
"The final outcome of the great war was the colonial ascendancy of Great
Britain, but such was not the conscious aim of those who carried through
the struggle."* (* Ibid page 736.) Diplomacy signed away with a dash of
the quill possessions which British arms had won after tough fights,
anxious blockades, and long cruises full of tension and peril. Even when
the end of the war saw the great Conqueror conquered and consigned to his
foam-fenced prison in the South Atlantic, Great Britain gave back many of
the fruits which it had cost her much, in the lives of her brave and the
sufferings of her poor, to win; and Castlereagh defended this policy in
the House of Commons on the curious ground that it was expedient "freely
to open to France the means of peaceful occupation, and that it was not
the interest of this country to make her a military and conquering,
instead of a commercial and pacific nation."* (* Parliamentary Debates 28
462.)

PART 2.

The events with which this book is mainly concerned occurred within the
four years 1800 to 1804, during which Europe saw Bonaparte leap from the
position of First Consul of the French Republic to the Imperial throne.
After great French victories at Marengo, Hochstadt, and Hohenlinden
(1800), and a brilliant naval triumph for the British at Copenhagen
(1801), came the fragile Peace of Amiens (1802)--an "experimental peace,"
as Cornwallis neatly described it. Fourteen months later (May 1803) war
broke out again; and this time there was almost incessant fighting on a
titanic scale, by land and sea, until the great Corsican was humbled and
broken at Waterloo.

The reader will be aided in forming an opinion upon the events discussed
hereafter, by a glance at the colonial situation during the period in
question. The extent of the dependencies of France and England in 1800
and the later years will be gathered from the following summary.

In America France regained Louisiana, covering the mouth of the
Mississippi. It had been in Spanish hands since 1763; but Talleyrand,
Bonaparte's foreign minister, put pressure upon Spain, and Louisiana
became French once more under the secret treaty of San Ildefonso (October
1800). The news of the retrocession, however, aroused intense feeling in
the United States, inasmuch as the establishment of a strong foreign
power at the mouth of the principal water-way in the country jeopardised
the whole trade of the Mississippi valley. President Jefferson,
recognising that the perpetuation of the new situation "would have put us
at war with France immediately," sent James Monroe to Paris to negotiate.
As Bonaparte plainly saw at the beginning of 1803 that another war with
Great Britain was inevitable, he did not wish to embroil himself with the
Americans also, and agreed to sell the possession to the Republic for
eighty million francs. Indeed, he completed arrangements for the sale
even before Monroe arrived.

Some efforts had also been made, at Bonaparte's instance, to induce Spain
to give up the Floridas, East and West, but European complications
prevented the exertion of pressure in this direction; and the whole of
Florida became part of the United States by treaty signed in 1819. The
sale of Louisiana lowered the French flag on the only remaining portion
of American territory that acknowledged the tricolour, except the
pestilential fragment of French Guiana, on the north-east of South
America, where France has had a footing since the beginning of the
seventeenth century, save for a short interval (1809 to 1815) when it was
taken by the British and Portuguese. But the possession has never been a
profitable one, and a contemporary writer, quoting an official
publication, describes it as enjoying "neither agriculture, commerce, nor
industry."* (* Fallot, L'Avenir Colonial de la France (1903) page 237.)

In the West Indies, France had lost Martinique and Guadeloupe during the
naval wars prior to Bonaparte's ascension to supreme authority. These
islands were restored to her under the Treaty of Amiens; were once more
captured by the British in 1809 to 1810; and were finally handed back to
France under the Treaty of Paris in 1814. Tobago and St. Lucia, taken
from France in 1803, were not restored.

The large island of San Domingo (the present republic of Haiti, the
Espanola of Columbus, and the first seat of European colonisation in the
west) had been occupied by French, Spanish, and British planters prior to
1796. The French had been there officially since Richelieu recognised and
protected the settlements made by filibusters early in the seventeenth
century. The decree of the revolutionary Assembly freeing the slaves in
all French possessions led to widespread insurrections. There were scenes
of frightful outrage; and above the storm of blood and horror rose to
fame the huge figure of the black hero, Toussaint L'Ouverture. At the
head of a negro army he at first assisted the French to overturn Spanish
rule; but having attained great personal power, and being a man of
astonishing capacity for controlling the people of his own race, and for
mastering military and governmental problems, he determined to use the
opportunity to found an autonomous state under the suzerainty of France.
By January 1801 Toussaint L'Ouverture was in possession of the capital.
But Bonaparte would not tolerate the domination of the black conqueror,
and despatched an expedition to San Domingo to overthrow his government
and establish French paramountcy. The result was disastrous. It is true
that Toussaint was captured and exiled to France, where he died miserably
in prison at Besancon in 1803; but the white troops under General Leclerc
perished of yellow fever in hundreds; the blacks retired to the mountains
and harassed the suffering French; whilst the vigilance of British
frigates, and the requirements of European policy, obviated all
possibility of effective reinforcements being sent. Gallic authority in
San Domingo ended ingloriously, for the negroes in 1803 drove the
debilitated chivalry of France in defeat and disaster to the sea, and
chose to be their ruler one who, like themselves, had commenced life as a
slave. Napoleon said at St. Helena that his attempt to subjugate San
Domingo was the greatest folly of his life.

In the Indian Ocean the French possessed the Isle of France (now, as a
British colony, called Mauritius) and Reunion. They had not yet
established themselves in Madagascar, though there was some trade between
the Mascareignes and the colonists of the Isle of France. Bonaparte
during the Consulate contemplated making definite attempts to colonise
Madagascar, and, early in 1801, called for a report from his first
colonial minister, Forfait. When he obtained the document, he sent it
back asking for more details, an indication that his interest in the
subject was more than one of transient curiosity. Forfait suggested the
project of establishing at Madagascar a penal colony such as the British
had at Port Jackson;* (* Prentout, L'Ile de France sous Decaen, 302.) but
subsequent events did not favour French colonial expansion, and nothing
was done.

The British captured Pondicherry and the other French settlements in
India in 1793, but agreed to restore them under the Treaty of Amiens. For
reasons which will be indicated later, however, the territories were not
evacuated by British troops, who continued to hold them till the
post-bellum readjustment of 1815 was negotiated.

A similar record applies to Senegal, in West Africa. It had been French
since the era of Richelieu, with intervals of capture, restoration, and
recapture. The British ousted their rivals once more in 1804, and gave
back the conquest in 1815.

A careful examination of these details reveals a remarkable fact.
Although the year 1810 saw the Napoleonic empire at the crest of its
greatness in Europe; although by that time the Emperor was the mightiest
personal factor in world politics; although in that year he married a
daughter of the Caesars, and thought he had laid plans for the foundation
of a dynasty that should perpetuate the Napoleonic name in association
with Napoleonic power--yet, in that very year, France had been stripped
of the last inch of her colonial possessions. The nation in whose
glorious Pantheon were emblazoned the great names of Montcalm and
Dupleix, of Jacques Cartier and La Salle, of Champlain and La
Bourdonnais, and whose inveterate capacity for colonisation of even the
most difficult kind can never be doubted by any candid student of her
achievements in this field, both before and since the disastrous
Napoleonic age, was now naked of even so much as a barren rock in a
distant sea upon which to plant her flag.

Such is the picture of the French colonial system as it presents itself
during the period within which occurred the events described in this
book. These facts give poignancy to the reflection of the distinguished
philosophical historian who has written of his country: "A melancholy
consequence of her policy of interference in neighbouring states, and of
occupying herself with continental conquests, has always been the loss of
her naval power and of her colonies. She could only establish oversea
possessions on a durable foundation on the condition of renouncing the
policy of invasion that she practised in Europe during the centuries.
Every continental victory was balanced by the ruin of our naval power and
of our distant possessions, that is to say, the decrease of our real
influence in the world."* (* Leroy-Beaulieu, Colonisation chez les
Peuples Modernes, 1902 edition, 1 220.)

PART 3.

It would be simple to sum up the colonial situation of Great Britain in
the period under review, by saying that she gained just in the measure
that France lost. But such a crude formula would not convey a sufficient
sense of her actual achievements. The end of the great war left her with
a wider dominion than that with which she was endowed when she plunged
into the struggle; but it left her also with augmented power and
prestige, a settled sense of security, and a steeled spirit of
resolution--elements not measurable on the scale of the map, but counting
as immense factors in the government and development of oversea
possessions.

The details of the British colonial empire during the storm epoch, are as
follow:--

In Canada she governed a belt of country stretching from the Atlantic to
the Pacific, divided for administrative purposes into two areas, one of
which, Lower Canada--embracing the cities of Quebec and Montreal, and
including the basin of the St. Lawrence--was populated principally by
people of French origin. It would be too much to suppose that these
colonists, who jealously preserved the French language and the French
tradition, were indifferent to the doings of their kin across the water;
and there were, indeed, many who cherished the hope that events would so
shape themselves as to restore the authority of France in this part of
the New World. But the habitant was Roman Catholic as well as French, and
the hierarchy was profoundly distrustful of the regime which it regarded
as the heritage of the hateful ideas of 1789. We may speculate as to what
would have happened if Napoleon had set himself to woo the affections of
the French Canadians. But throughout the great wars Canada remained loyal
to the British connection, despite internal difficulties and discontents.

Great Britain also held Newfoundland, as well as those maritime provinces
which have since become federated as part of the Dominion.

In South America she possessed British Guiana, and for a period, as
related above, French Guiana also.

In the West Indies, in 1800, her flag flew over the entire crescent of
the Windward and Leeward groups from Granada to the Virgins; she was
mistress of Trinidad, Tobago, Jamaica, the "still vexd" Bermudas and the
whole bunch of the Bahamas; and she had interests in San Domingo. At the
Peace of Amiens she retained only Trinidad of the islands captured during
the war; and she presented no very stubborn resistance to the negro
revolt that lost her any further control over the largest of the sugar
islands.

She had the Cape of Good Hope in her custody in 1800, but weakly allowed
it to be bartered away by diplomacy at Amiens; only, however, to reassert
her power there six years later, when it became at length apparent to
British statesmen--as it surely should have been obvious to them
throughout--that Australia and India could not be secure while the chief
southern harbour of Africa was in foreign possession.

Ceylon was retained as a sparkling jewel for the British crown when so
much that had been won in fair fight was allowed to slip away. The
capture of Java (1811) and its restoration to the Dutch belong to a later
period; whilst the growth of British power in India scarcely falls within
the scope of a brief review of the colonial situation, though of great
importance in its effects.

Malta, which has usually been classed as a colony, though its principal
value is rather strategic than colonial, was occupied by the British in
September 1800, and the cat-footed efforts of Napoleonic diplomacy to get
her out of the island made it a storm centre in European politics in
these fiery years. Out she would not come, and did not. Neither Tzar nor
Emperor could get her out, by plot or by arms; and there she still
remains.

PART 4.

The position of the British in the South Seas demands special
consideration, as being immediately related to our subject. In 1800 the
only part of Australasia occupied by white people was Norfolk Island and
the small area at Port Jackson shut in between the sea and a precipitous
range of mountains that for thirteen years to come presented an
unconquerable barrier to inland exploration, despite repeated endeavours
to find a way across them. The settlement had spread only a few miles
beyond the spot where Governor Arthur Phillip had resolved to locate his
First Fleet company twelve years before. As yet no attempt had been made
to occupy Tasmania, which had been determined to be an island only two
years previously. New Zealand also was virgin ground for the European
colonist. The Maori had it all to himself.

The means of defending the little colony, in the event of an attack
during the war which raged from five years after its foundation till
1802, and again from 1803 for twelve years more, were insignificant. The
population in 1800 numbered rather more than five thousand, only about
one-half of whom were soldiers, officials, and free people.* (* The total
population of Sydney, Parramatta, and Norfolk Island on January 1, 1801,
was declared to be 5100, of whom 2492 were convicts--1431 men, 500 women,
and 561 children. Of the remainder, 1887 were "free people," being
neither on the civil nor the military establishment.) The remainder were
convicts, some of them being Irishmen transported for participation in
the rebellion of 1798, including not a few men of education. These men
were naturally writhing under a burning sense of defeat and oppression,
and were still rebels at heart. They were incarcerated with a
miscellaneous horde of criminals made desperate and resentful by harsh
treatment. It is scarcely doubtful that if a French naval squadron had
descended on the coast, the authorities would have had to face, not only
an enemy's guns in Port Jackson, but an insurrection amongst the unhappy
people whom the colony had been primarily founded to chastise. The
immigration of a farming and artisan class was discouraged; and it is
scarcely conceivable that, apart from the officials, the gaolers, and the
military, who would have done their duty resolutely, there were any in
the colony who, for affection, would have lifted a hand to defend the
land in which they lived, and the regime which they hated.

There was at the Governor's command a small military force, barely
sufficient to maintain discipline in a community in which there were
necessarily dangerously turbulent elements;* (* In a report to Governor
King, April 1805, Brevet-Major Johnson pointed out that the military were
barely sufficient for mounting guard, and urged "the great want of an
augmentation to the military forces of this colony" (Historical Records
of New South Wales 6 183). Colonel Paterson, in a letter to Sir Joseph
Banks, 1804, remarked that "it will certainly appear evident that our
military force at present is very inadequate" (Ibid 5 454). John
Blaxland, in a letter to Lord Liverpool, 1809, wrote that "it is to be
feared that if two frigates were to appear, the settlement is not capable
of opposing any resistance" (Ibid 7 231). An unsigned memorandum in the
Record Office, "bearing internal evidence of having been written by an
officer who was in the colony during the Governorship of Hunter," pointed
out that "a naval force is absolutely necessary on the coast of New South
Wales...to protect the colony from an attack by the French from the
Mauritius, which would have taken place long ago if the enemy had
possessed a naval force equal to the enterprise" (Ibid 7 248 to 250).)
but he was destitute of effective vessels for service afloat. When the
navigator Flinders was wrecked in the Porpoise in August 1803--his own
exploring ship, the Investigator, being by this time
unseaworthy--Governor King had no other craft to give him for his return
voyage than the decrepit Cumberland, a mere leaky little barge hardly fit
for better uses than ferrying a placid lake. The colony was, in short,
simply a kraal for yarding British undesirables and housing their
keepers; its remoteness was an advantage for the purpose in view; and it
never seemed to strike the officials in England who superintended its
affairs, that the adequate defence of a gaol against foreign aggression
was an undertaking that called for exertion or forethought. The
unreluctant retrocession of the Cape to the Dutch in 1800 indicates that
the interest of defending Australia was lost sight of in the midst of
what appeared to be more pressing considerations.

It has been remarked above that there was a period when the peace of
Australia was imperilled. The danger was obviated, certainly not because
of the efficiency of the defence, but rather through lack of enterprise
on the part of the Admiral in command of the French squadron in the
Indian Ocean. It will be well to narrate the circumstances, together with
an incident which illustrates in an amusing manner the kind of man this
officer was.

After the signing of the Treaty of Amiens, Bonaparte sent out a squadron
commanded by Rear-Admiral Linois, conveying General Charles Decaen, who
was commissioned to administer the former French possessions in India,
which, under the terms of the treaty, were to be surrendered to France.
But when the expedition arrived at Pondicherry, the Governor-General of
India, Lord Wellesley, gave orders to his subordinates that no
concessions were to be made to the French without his express authority;
and as he stubbornly refused to give his warrant for surrendering an inch
of territory, there was nothing for General Decaen to do but sail away to
Mauritius, then, as already remarked, a French colony. Lord Wellesley
acted under secret orders from the Secretary of State, Lord Hobart, dated
October 17, 1802, only seven months after the treaty was signed, for the
British Government did not believe in the permanency of the peace and did
not desire the French to re-assert a footing in India, where their
presence, in the event of a renewal of hostilities, would be dangerous.

When the war was renewed, Linois, with his squadron, was still in the
Indian Ocean. The Isle of France was not a self-supporting colony, but
had to depend on money and supplies obtained either from Europe or from
the vessels of the East India Company, which, from time to time, were
captured by French privateers and men-of-war. When Nelson shattered the
naval power of France at Trafalgar in 1805, and vigilant British frigates
patrolled the whole highway of commerce from Europe to the Cape of Good
Hope, Decaen's position became precarious. The supplies sent out to him
were frequently captured by the enemy; and had it not been that Port
Louis became a regular nest of adventurous French privateers--"pirates,"
the British called them--who frequently found a rich prey in the shape of
heavily laden India merchantmen, his garrison must soon have been starved
out.

The incident to which reference has been made occurred in 1804, and is
probably without a parallel in naval history as an example of the effect
of audacity acting on timidity. It was known that a convoy of ships
belonging to the East India Company was to leave Canton early in the
year. Linois, with five vessels, including his flagship, the Marengo, 74
guns, sailed for the Straits of Malacca to intercept them. On February
14, near Polo Aor, to the north-east of Singapore, the French sighted the
convoy, sixteen Company ships, fourteen merchantmen and a brig, all laden
with tea, silks, and other rich merchandise.

The East India Company's vessels carried guns, but they were not equipped
for facing heavily armed men-of-war. Their crews were not trained
fighting men; they were deeply laden, and their decks were heavily
cumbered. Moreover, they were not protected by a naval squadron; and had
Rear-Admiral Linois been a commander of daring, initiative, and resource,
the greater part, or the whole, of this enormous mass of floating
treasure might have fallen like a ripe peach into his hands.

But he had to contend with an English sailor of astounding and quite
picturesque assurance in Nathaniel Dance, the commodore of the fleet.
Dance fully expected, when he left Canton, that he would meet French
raiders, though he was astonished when he saw five sail under the
tricolour bearing up towards him. But he had thought out what he intended
to do if attacked; and, partly by courage, partly by a superb piece of
"bluff," he succeeded completely.

Before sailing, the Company ships had been freshly painted. Their gun
embrasures showed up more fearsome to the eye of imagination than they
were in reality. Dance also carried blue ensigns, which were hoisted on
four of his craft when the French made their appearance. He resorted to
this device with the deliberate purpose of making the strongest vessels
of his convoy look like British men-of-war. In fact, he commanded a fleet
of opulent merchantmen, the best of which, by the mere use of brushes and
pots of paint, and by the hoisting of a few yards of official bunting,
were made to resemble fighting ships. But, wonder of wonders! this
scarecrow strategy struck terror into the heart of a real Rear-Admiral,
and, as a French historian somewhat lugubriously, but quite candidly,
acknowledges: "Les ruses de Dance reussirent; les flammes bleues, les
canons de bois, les batteries peintes, produisirent leur effet."

No sooner did the French squadron appear, than Dance drew up his convoy
in two lines, with the fifteen smaller vessels under the lee of the
sixteen larger ones, which presented their painted broadsides to the foe.
It was a manoeuvre which threatened a determination to fight, and Linois
was disposed to be cautious. He was puzzled by the number of ships,
having been informed by an American captain at Batavia that only
seventeen were to leave Canton. The larger fleet, and the blue ensigns
fluttering from four masts, imbued him with a spirit of reluctance which
he dignified with the name of prudence. As a naval historian puts it,
"The warlike appearance of the sixteen ships, the regularity of their
manoeuvres, and the boldness of their advance, led the French Admiral to
deliberate whether a part of them were not cruisers."* (* James, Naval
History 3 247. There is a contemporary account of the incident in the
Gentleman's Magazine (1804) volume 74 pages 963 and 967.) Linois did not
like to attack, as darkness was approaching, but argued that if the bold
face put upon the matter by the British were merely a stratagem, they
would attempt to fly in the night; in which case he would not hesitate to
chase them. But Dance did nothing of the kind. He had taken his enemy's
measure; or, to quote the French historian again, "il comprit l'etat
moral de son adversaire." He maintained his formation during the night,
keeping blue lights burning on the four ships which sported the blue
ensign, to enforce the illusion that they were the naval escort of the
convoy, and were eager for battle. In the morning Linois was quite
satisfied that he really had to contend with a fleet pugnaciously
inclined, which, if he tried to hurt them, would probably hurt him more.
Cheers broke from the British decks as the Marengo bore up. Dance then
manoeuvred as if his intention were to shut in the French squadron
between two lines, and rake them on both flanks. This clever movement so
scared the Rear-Admiral that he determined to run. A shot was fired from
his flagship, which killed one man and wounded another on the Royal
George; whereupon the British sailors fired their guns in return, and
kept up a furious, but quite harmless, cannonade for forty minutes. Not a
single French ship was hit; but under cover of the thick smoke which "the
engagement" occasioned, Linois and his squadron sailed away, and left the
cheering Britons in the peace which they so certainly required, but had
so audaciously pretended that they did not in the least degree desire.

Dance became temporarily a national hero. The Englishman enjoys a joke,
and at a period of extreme tension the impudent exploit of the commodore
provoked a roar of delighted and derisive laughter throughout the British
Isles. He was feted by the City of London, knighted by King George,
presented with a sword of honour, and endowed by the Company with a
handsome fortune.

On the other hand, Napoleon was furious. Linois "has made the French flag
the laughing stock of the universe," he wrote to his Minister of Marine,
Decres.* (* Correspondance de Napoleon I (1858 to 1870) volume 9 document
8024.) Again he said, "The conduct of Linois is miserable"; and in a
third letter, summing up in a crisp sentence the cause of so many French
failures on the blue water, he said: "All the maritime expeditions that
have been despatched since I have been at the head of the Government have
failed because our admirals see double, and have found, I do not know
where, that one can make war without running any risks;" "it is honour
that I wish them to conserve, rather than a few wooden vessels and some
men." It was while still smarting under this same indignity, and urging
his Minister to hurry the sending of ships with supplies for the support
of the Isle of France, that Napoleon made one of his most famous retorts.
Decres, with the obsequiousness of a courtier, had written that if the
Emperor insisted on ordering certain ships to be despatched, "I should
recognise the will of God, and should send them." "I will excuse you from
comparing me to God," wrote Napoleon; and, prodding the dilatory Minister
again to make haste, he wrote, "You can surely, to meet the needs of our
colonies, send from several ports vessels laden with flour. There is no
need to be God for that!"* (* Correspondance, volume 17 document 13,960.)

Now, if instead of the timid Linois, the French squadron in the Indian
Ocean had been commanded by an Admiral endowed with the qualities of
dash, daring, and enterprise, the consequences to the weak little British
settlement at Sydney would have been disastrous. After Trafalgar, British
interests in the South and the East were more amply safeguarded. But
before that great event, Linois had magnificent opportunities for doing
mischief. Port Jackson would have been a rich prize. Stores, which the
Isle of France badly needed, could have been obtained there plentifully.
Ships from China frequently made it a port of call, preferring to take
the route through the recently discovered Bass Straits than to run the
hazard of capture by crossing the Indian Ocean. It was just a lucky
accident that the enemy's admiral was a nervous gentleman who was afraid
to take risks. General Decaen, a fine soldier, openly cursed his nautical
colleague; but nothing could strike a spirit of vigorous initiative into
the breast of Linois. He was always afraid that if he struck he would be
struck at--in which view he was undoubtedly right.

Did Napoleon himself realise that there was so rich a prize in Port
Jackson? Not until it was too late. In 1810, when he was fitting out
another expedition for aggressive service in the Indian Ocean, he
probably remembered what he had read in Peron's account of the Voyage de
Decouvertes aux Terres Australes about the British colony there, and
directed that the new squadron should "take the English colony of Port
Jackson, which is to the south of the Isle of France, and where
considerable resources will be found" ("faire prendre la colonie anglaise
de Jackson"--sic),* (* Correspondance, volume 20 document 16,544.) But
the task was well-nigh hopeless then, and the squadron never sailed.
Probably it would not have reached the Indian Ocean if it had left
Europe, for the Cape, which was in Dutch hands when Linois had his great
chance, was recaptured by the British in January 1806. In 1810 Admirals
Pellew and Bertie were in command of strong British forces, and Lord
Minto, the Governor-General of India, was determined to root the French
out of the Isle of France, and clear India of danger from that source.
They succeeded, and Mauritius has been British ever since.

We must now leave the sphere of conflict in which the destinies of the
world were being shaped, and enter upon another phase of this history.
The reader will:

"slip across the summer of the world,
Then, after a long tumble about the Cape
And frequent interchange of foul and fair,"

--will accompany for a while an illustrious British explorer in his task
of filling up the map of the globe.

CHAPTER 1. FLINDERS AND THE INVESTIGATOR.

On April 7, 1802, His Majesty's ship Investigator, 334 tons, Commander
Matthew Flinders, was beating off the eastern extremity of Kangaroo
Island, endeavouring to make the mainland of Terra Australis, to follow
the course of discovery and survey for which she had been commissioned.
The winds were very baffling for pursuing his task according to the
carefully scientific method which Flinders had prescribed for himself. He
had declared to Sir Joseph Banks, the President of the Royal Society,
before he left England, that he would endeavour so to explore the then
unknown coasts of the vast island for which he himself afterwards
suggested the name Australia, "that no person shall have occasion to come
after me to make further discoveries."* (* Flinders to Banks, April 29,
1801, Historical Records of New South Wales 4 351.) This principle of
thoroughness distinguished his work throughout the voyage. Writing
thirteen years later, after the long agony of his imprisonment in
Mauritius, he said that his "leading object had been to make so accurate
an investigation of the shores of Terra Australis, that no future voyage
to the country should be necessary" for the purpose; and that had not
circumstances been too strong for him, "nothing of importance should have
been left for future discoverers upon any part of these extensive
coasts."* (* Flinders, A Voyage to Terra Australis 2 143.) Nobody can
study Flinders' beautiful charts without recognising them as the work of
a master of his craft; and so well did he fulfil his promise, until the
debility of his ship and a chain of misfortunes interposed to prevent
him, that the Admiralty charts in current use are substantially those
which Flinders made over a hundred years ago.* (* Sir J.K. Laughton in
Dictionary of National Biography 19 328.)

His method, though easy enough to pursue in a modern steamer,
comparatively indifferent to winds and currents, was one demanding from a
sailing ship hard, persistent, straining work, with unflagging vigilance
and great powers of endurance. It was this. The Investigator was kept all
day so close along shore that the breaking water was visible from the
deck, and no river mouth or inlet could escape notice. When the weather
was too rough to enable this to be done with safety, Flinders stationed
himself at the masthead, scanning every reach of the shore-line. "Before
retiring to rest," he wrote, "I made it a practice to finish the rough
chart for the day, as also my astronomical observations and bearings."
When darkness fell, the ship hauled off from the coast, and every
morning, as soon after daylight as possible, she was brought in-shore
again, great care being taken to resume the work at precisely the point
where it was suspended the night before. "This plan," he wrote, "to see
and lay down everything myself, required constant attention and much
labour, but was absolutely necessary to obtaining that accuracy of which
I was desirous."

Before Flinders reached Kangaroo Island, he had, in this painstaking
manner, discovered and mapped the stretch of coast westward from the head
of the Great Australian Bight, charted all the islands, and, by following
the two large gulfs, Spencer's and St. Vincent's, to their extremities,
had shattered the theory commonly favoured by geographers before his
time, that a passage would be found cleaving the continent from the Gulf
of Carpentaria to the Strait which George Bass had discovered in 1798.*
(* Pinkerton, in his Modern Geography (1807) volume 2 588, published
after Flinders had made his principal discoveries, but before the results
were known, reflected the general opinion in the passage: "Some suppose
that this extensive region, when more thoroughly investigated, will be
found to consist of two or three vast islands, intersected by narrow
seas." The Committee of the Institute of France, which drew up the
instructions for the expedition commanded by Baudin, directed him to
search for a supposed strait dividing Australia longitudinally into "two
great and nearly equal islands" (Peron, Voyage de Decouvertes aux Terres
Australes 1 5). With these passages may be compared the following from
Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, published
in 1824, ten years after the appearance of Flinders' book: "There are few
voyages from which more important accessions to geographical knowledge
have been derived than from this voyage of Captain Flinders, especially
when we reflect on the great probability that New Holland...[observe that
Kerr had not adopted the name Australia, which Flinders suggested only in
a footnote] will soon rank high in population and wealth. Before his
voyage it was doubtful whether New Holland was not divided into two great
islands, by a strait passing between Bass Straits and the Gulf of
Carpentaria. Captain Flinders has put an end to all doubts on this point.
He examined the coast in the closest and most accurate manner; he found,
indeed, two great openings; these he sailed up to their termination; and
consequently, as there were no other openings, and these were mere
inlets, New Holland can no longer be supposed to be divided into two
great islands. It must be regarded as forming one very large one; or
rather, from its immense size, a species of continent" (Kerr 18 462).)

That part of the southern coast of Australia lying between Cape Leeuwin
and Fowler Bay, in the Bight, had been explored prior to Flinders' time,
partly by Captain George Vancouver, one of Cook's men, in 1791, and
partly in 1792 by the French commander, Bruni Dentrecasteaux, who was
despatched in search of the gallant La Perouse--"vanished trackless into
blue immensity."* (* Carlyle, French Revolution book 2 cap 5.) Flinders
carefully revised what they had done, commencing his elaborate,
independent survey immediately after the Investigator made the Leeuwin,
on December 6, 1801. He had therefore been just four months in this
region, when he left his anchorage at Kangaroo Island--four months of
incessant daily and nightly labour diligently directed to the task in
hand. Always generous in his praise of good work, he paid a warm tribute
to the quality of the charts prepared by Beautemps Beaupre, "geographical
engineer" of La Recherche, Dentrecasteaux's corvette. "Perhaps no chart
of a coast so little known as this is, will bear a comparison with its
original better than this of M. Beaupre," he said; and though he put
forward his own as being fuller in detail and more accurate, he was
careful to point out that he made no claim for superior workmanship, and
that, indeed, he would have been open to reproach if, after having
followed the coast with Beaupre's chart in hand, he had not effected
improvements where circumstances did not permit his predecessor to make
so close an examination. It is an attractive characteristic of Flinders,
that he never missed an opportunity of appreciating valuable service in
other navigators.

But from the time when the Investigator passed the head of the Bight, the
whole of the coast-line traversed was virginal to geographical science.
With a clean sheet of paper, Flinders began to chart a new stretch of the
earth's outline, and to link up the undiscovered with the known portions
of the great southern continent. Our interest in his work is intensified
by the reflection that of all the coasts of the habitable earth, this was
the last important portion still to be discovered. True it is that
research in the arctic and antarctic circles remained to be pursued, and
still remains. Man will not cease his efforts till he knows his planet in
its entirety, though the price of the knowledge may be high. But when he
has compassed the extreme ends of the globe, he will not have found a
rood of ground upon which any one will ever wish to live. The earth lust
of the nations is not provoked by thoughts of the two poles. Ruling out
the frozen regions, therefore, as places where discovery is pursued
without thought of future habitation, it is a striking fact that this
voyage of Flinders opened up the ultimate belt of the earth's contour
hitherto unknown. The continents were finally unveiled when he concluded
his labours. Europe, the centre of direction, had comprehended the form
of Asia, had encircled Africa, had brought America within ken and
control. It had gradually pieced together a knowledge of Australia, all
but the extensive area the greater part of which it was left for Flinders
to reveal. The era of important modern coastal discovery within habitable
regions, which commenced with the researches directed by Prince Henry the
Navigator from 1426 to 1460, and attained to brilliancy with Columbus in
1492 and Vasco da Gama in 1497, ended with Flinders in 1802 and 1803. He
ranges worthily with that illustrious company of "men full of activity,
stirrers abroad, and searchers of the remote parts of the world," of whom
Richard Hakluyt speaks, and is outshone by none of them in the
faithfulness with which his work was done, and in all the qualities that
make up the man of high capacity and character entrusted with a great
enterprise.

When Flinders was appointed to the command of the Investigator, he was
only twenty-seven years of age. But he had already won distinction by his
demonstration that Bass Strait was a strait, and not a gulf, a fact not
proved by George Bass's famous voyage from Sydney to Westernport in a
whale-boat. His circumnavigation of Tasmania--then called Van Diemen's
Land--in the Norfolk; the discovery of the Tamar estuary and Port
Dalrymple; some excellent nautical surveying among the islands to the
north-west of Tasmania; and an expedition along the Queensland coast, had
also earned for him the confidence of his official superiors. His ardour
for discovery, and the exact, scientific character of his charts and
observations, won him a powerful and steadfast friend in Sir Joseph
Banks, who had been with Cook in the Endeavour in 1768 to 1771, and never
lost his interest in Australian exploration. At the beginning of his
naval career Flinders had tasted the "delights of battle." As a
midshipman on the Bellerophon (Captain Pasley), he played his small part
on the "glorious first of June" (1794), when "Black Dick," Lord Howe, won
his greatly vaunted victory over the French off Brest.

But before this event his tastes and aspirations had set in the direction
of another branch of the naval service. A voyage to the South Seas and
the West Indies under Bligh, in the Providence, in 1791, had revealed to
his imagination the glory of discovery and the vastness and beauty of the
world beyond European horizons. The fame and achievements of Cook were
still fresh and wonderful in the mouths of all who followed the sea.
Bligh, a superb sailor--not even the enemies whom he made by his rough
tongue and brusque manner denied that--taught him to be a scientific
navigator; and when he threaded the narrow, coral-walled waters of Torres
Strait, he knew that to the southward were coasts as yet unmarked on any
chart, seas as yet unploughed by any keel. For this work of exploration
Flinders nourished a passion as intense as that which inferior natures
have had for love, avarice, or honours. It absorbed all his life and
thought; and opportunity, becoming in his case the handmaid of capacity,
was abundantly justified by accomplishment.

There is one striking fact which serves to "place" Flinders among
navigators. As has just been observed, he learnt his practical navigation
under Bligh, on that historically unfortunate captain's second
bread-fruit expedition, when he was entrusted with the care of the
scientific instruments. Now, Bligh had perfected his navigation under
Cook, on the Resolution, and actually chose the landing-place in
Kealakeakua Bay, where the greatest English seaman who ever lived was
slain. Here is a school of great sailors: Cook the master of Bligh, Bligh
the master of Flinders; and Flinders in turn had on board the
Investigator as a midshipman, his cousin, John Franklin, to whom he
taught navigation, and who acquired from him that "ardent love of
geographical research" which brought him immortal fame, and a grave
amongst the ice-packs and the snows of the North-West Passage.* (* See
Markham, Life of Sir John Franklin page 43 and Traill, Life of Franklin
page 16. Traill's graceful sentences are worth transcribing: "The example
of the fine seaman and enthusiastic explorer under whom he served must
indeed, for a lad of Franklin's ardent temperament, have been an
education in itself. Throughout his whole life he cherished the warmest
admiration for the character of Matthew Flinders, and in later years he
welcomed the opportunity of paying an enduring tribute to his old
commander's memory in the very region of the world which his discoveries
had done so much to gain for civilisation." It is pleasant to find
Flinders speaking cordially of his young pupil in a letter written during
the voyage. "He is a very fine youth, and there is every probability of
his doing credit to the Investigator and himself.") There is nothing
comparable with this direct succession of illustrious masters and pupils
in the history of navigation. The names of all four are indelibly written
on the map of the world. Three of them--Cook, Flinders, and Franklin--are
among our very foremost navigators and discoverers, men whom a race proud
of the heritage of the sea will for ever hold in honour and affection;
whilst the fourth, Bligh, though his reputation is wounded by association
with two mutinies, was in truth a daring and a brilliant seaman, and a
brave man in a fight. Nelson especially thanked him for noble service at
Copenhagen, and his achievement in working a small, open boat from the
mid-Pacific, where the mutinous crew of the Bounty dropped him, through
Torres Strait to Timor, a distance of 3620 miles, stands memorably on the
credit side of his account.

See what it meant to have been trained in a school that observed the
rules and respected the traditions of James Cook. When at the end of his
long voyage of nine months and nine days, Flinders took the Investigator
through Port Jackson heads into harbour (Sunday, May 9, 1802), he had not
a sick man on board.* (* Voyage 1 226.) His crew finished hearty,
browned, and vigorous. He was able to write from the Cape of Good Hope
that "officers and crew were, generally speaking, in better health than
on the day we sailed from Spithead, and not in less good spirits."
Scrupulous attention to cleanliness and hygiene produced this result in
an age when scurvy was more to be feared than shipwreck. On every fine
day the decks below and the cockpit were washed, dried with stoves, and
sprinkled with vinegar. Care was taken to prevent the crew from sleeping
in wet clothes. At frequent intervals beds, chests, and bags were opened
out and exposed to the sweetening influences of fresh air and sunshine.
Personal cleanliness was enforced. Lime-juice and other anti-scorbutics
were frequently served out: a precautionary measure which originated in
Cook's day, and which down to our own times has caused all British
sailors to be popularly known as "lime-juicers" in the American Navy. The
dietary scale and the cooking were subjects of careful thought. This keen
young officer of twenty-seven looked after his company of eighty-seven
people with as grave and kindly a concern as if he were a grey-bearded
father to them all; and was liberally rewarded by their affection. During
his imprisonment in Mauritius, one of his men stayed with him voluntarily
for several years, enduring the unpleasantness of life in confinement far
away from home, out of sheer devotion to his commander; and did not leave
until Flinders, becoming hopeless of liberation, insisted on his taking
advantage of an opportunity of going to England.

There is a touching proof of Flinders' tender regard for his men in the
naming of a small group of islands to the west of the bell-mouth of
Spencer's Gulf. A boat's crew commanded by the mate, John Thistle, was
drowned there, through the boat capsizing. Thistle was an excellent
seaman, who had been one of Bass's whale-boat crew in 1798, and had
volunteered for service with the Investigator. Not only did Flinders name
an island after him, and another after a midshipman, Taylor, who perished
on the same occasion, but he gave to each of the islands near Cape
Catastrophe the name of one of the seamen who lost their lives in the
accident. In a country where men are valued for their native worth rather
than on account of rank or wealth, such as is happily the case to a very
large degree in Australia--and this is a far finer thing than mere
political democracy--perhaps nothing in the career of Flinders is more
likely to ensure respect for his memory, apart from the value of his
achievements, than this perpetuation of the names of the sailors who died
in the service.

Throughout the voyage he promoted amusements among his people; "and when
the evenings were fine the drum and fife announced the forecastle to be
the scene of dancing; nor did I discourage other playful amusements which
might occasionally be more to the taste of the sailors, and were not
unseasonable."* (* Voyage 1 36.) The work may have been strenuous, and
the commander was unsparing of his own energies; but the life was happy,
and above all it was healthy. The pride which Flinders had in the result
was modestly expressed: "I had the satisfaction to see my people orderly
and full of zeal for the service in which we were engaged." Really, it
was a splendid achievement in itself, and it showed that, if the hardship
of life in a small ship, on a long voyage, could not be abolished, at
least horror could be banished from it.

Compare this genial record with that of the French exploring ships Le
Geographe and Le Naturaliste, which were quite as well equipped for a
long voyage. They had, it is true, been longer at sea, but they had an
advantage not open to Flinders in being able to refit at Mauritius, had
rested again for some weeks at Timor, and had spent a considerable time
in the salubrious climate of southern Tasmania, where there was an
abundance of fresh food and water. When, on June 23, 1802, Le Geographe
appeared off Port Jackson, to solicit help from Governor King, it was
indeed "a ghastly crew" that she had on board. Her officers and crew were
rotten with scurvy. Scarcely one of them was fit to haul a rope or go
aloft. Out of one hundred and seventy men, only twelve were capable of
any kind of duty, and only two helmsmen could take their turn at the
wheel. Not a soul aboard, of any rank, was free from the disease.* (*
Peron, Voyage de Decouvertes 1 331 to 340; Flinders, Voyage 1 230.) Of
twenty-three scientific men and artists who sailed from Havre, in 1800,
only three returned to France with the expedition, and before its work
was over the Commander, Baudin, and several of the staff were dead. The
chief naturalist, Francois Peron, and one of the surgeons, Taillefer,
have left terrible accounts of the sufferings endured. Putrid water,
biscuits reduced almost to dust by weevils, and salt meat so absolutely
offensive to sight and smell that "the most famished of the crew
frequently preferred to suffer the agonies of hunger" rather than eat
it--these conditions, together with neglect of routine sanitary
precautions, produced a pitiable state of debility and pain, that made
the ship like an ancient city afflicted with plague. Indeed, the vivid
narratives of Thucydides and Boccaccio, when they counted:

"the sad degrees
Upon the plague's dim dial, caught the tone
Of a great death that lay upon the land,"

are not more haggard in their naturalism than is Taillefer's picture of
the sufferings of the sailors to whom he ministered. Their skin became
covered with tumours, which left ugly black patches; where hair grew
appeared sores "the colour of wine lees"; their lips shrivelled,
revealing gums mortified and ulcerated. They exhaled a breath so fetid in
odour that Taillefer loathed having to administer to them such remedies
as he had to give; and at one part of the voyage even his stock of drugs
was depleted, so great was the demand upon his resources. Their joints
became stiff, their muscles flaccid and contracted, and the utter
prostration to which they were reduced made him regret that they retained
so much of their intellectual faculties as to make them feel keenly the
weight of despair.* (* Voyage de Decouvertes 1 340.)

When Le Geographe stood outside Sydney Harbour, a boat's crew of
Flinders' bluejackets from the Investigator, themselves fresh from their
own long voyage, had to be sent out to work her into port. So enfeebled
were the French sailors that they could not even muster sufficient energy
to bring their vessel to the place where succour awaited them. While we
deplore this tale of distress, we can but mark the striking contrast with
the English vessel and her jolly crew. Truly, it meant something for a
commander to have learnt to manage a ship in a school nourished on the
example of Cook, whose title to fame might rest on his work as a
practical reformer of life at sea, even if his achievements as a
discoverer were not so incomparably brilliant.

We must now return to the Investigator, which, at the commencement of the
chapter, we left fighting with a contrary wind east of Kangaroo Island.
Although the sloop quitted her anchorage early on the morning of April 7,
at eight o'clock in the evening she had made very little headway across
Backstairs Passage. On the 8th, she was near enough to the mainland for
Flinders to resume his charting, and late in the afternoon of that day
occurred an incident to which the next chapter will be devoted.
Meanwhile, it is important to observe that had the wind blown from the
west or south-west, instead of from the east or south-east, Flinders
would have accomplished the survey of the coast between Cape Jervis, at
the entrance of St. Vincent's Gulf, and Cape Banks, before the French
discovery ship, Le Geographe, emerged from Bass Strait on her voyage
westward. The wind that filled Captain Baudin's sails, and drove his ship
forward towards the seas in which the Investigator was making important
discoveries, was the wind that delayed Flinders at Kangaroo Island. Had
the weather been more accommodating to the English captain and less to
the French, there cannot be the slightest doubt that even the fifty
leagues of coast, or thereabouts, which are all that can be claimed to
have been discovered by Baudin, would have been first charted by
Flinders. But the French expedition was so unfortunate, both as to
results and reputation--so undeservedly unfortunate, in some respects, as
will be shown in later chapters--that this small measure of success may
be conceded ungrudgingly. It is, indeed, somewhat to be regretted that
the small part of the Australian coast which was genuinely their own
discovery, should not have been in a more interesting region than was
actually the case; for the true "Terre Napoleon" is no better for the
most part than a sterile waste, with a back country of sand, swamp, and
mallee scrub, populated principally by rabbits, dingoes, and bandicoots.

CHAPTER 2. THE AFFAIR OF ENCOUNTER BAY.

On the afternoon of April 8,* (* In his manuscript journal, which was
used by the Quarterly reviewer of the first volume of the Voyage de
Decouvertes, in August 1810, Flinders gave the date on which he met Le
Geographe as April 9th (Quarterly Review volume 4 52). But there is no
contradiction. In his journal Flinders gave the date of the nautical day,
which commenced at noon. As he met Baudin's corvette in the late
afternoon, it was, by nautical reckoning, April 9th. But by the calendar,
the civil day commencing at midnight, the date was April 8th, as stated
by Flinders in his published volumes, by both Peron and Louis de
Freycinet, and in the log of Le Geographe. A similar difference of dates,
which puzzled Labilliere in writing his Early History of Victoria 1 108,
occurs as to the first sighting of Port Phillip by Flinders. It is
explained in exactly the same way.) the man at the masthead of the
Investigator reported a white rock ahead. He was mistaken. Glasses were
turned towards it, and as the distance lessened it became apparent that
the white object was a sail. The sloop was at this time in latitude 35
degrees 40 minutes south, longitude 138 degrees 58 minutes east. To meet
another vessel in this region, many leagues from regular trading routes,
in a part of the world hitherto undiscovered, was surprising. The
Investigator stood on her course, and as the strange ship became more
clearly defined it was evident that she was making towards the British
sloop. Flinders therefore "cleared for action in case of being attacked."

He knew that the French Government had sent out ships having like objects
with his own; he knew that some influential persons in England,
especially the Court of Directors of the East India Company, were uneasy
and suspicious about French designs; and he had been fully instructed by
the Admiralty as to the demeanour he should maintain if he met vessels
flying a hostile flag. But though his duty prescribed that he must not
offer any provocation, he could not forget that when he left Europe Great
Britain and France were still at war, and preparation for extremities was
a measure of mere prudence.

The stranger proved to be "a heavy-looking ship without any top-gallant
masts up." On the Investigator hoisting her colours, Le Geographe "showed
a French ensign, and afterwards an English jack forward, as we did a
white flag." Flinders manoeuvred so as to keep his broadside to the
stranger, "lest the flag of truce should be a deception." But the
demeanour of the French being purely pacific, he had a boat hoisted out
and went on board, Le Geographe having also hove to.

On the French vessel, meanwhile, similar curiosity had been provoked as
to the identity of the ship sailing east. Captain Baudin's men had been
engaged during the morning in harpooning dolphins, which they desired for
the sake of the flesh. Peron, in his narrative, waxes almost hysterically
joyous about the good fortune that brought along a school of these fish
just as the ship's company were almost perishing for want of fresh food.
They appeared, he says, like a gift from Heaven.* (* "Cette peche
heureuse nous parut comme un bienfait du ciel. Alors, en effet, le
terrible scorbut avoit commence ses ravages, et les salaisons pourries et
rongees de vers auxquelles nous etions reduits depuis plusieurs mois
precipitoient chaque jour l'affreux developpement de ce fleau." Voyage de
Decouvertes 1 323.) Unlike the bronzed and healthy crew of the
Investigator, the company on Le Geographe were suffering severely from
scurvy. The virulence of the disease increased daily. They were rejoicing
at the capture of nine large dolphins, which would supply them with a
feast of fresh meat, when the look-out man signalled that a sail was in
sight.* (* Mr. T. Ward, in his Rambles of an Australian Naturalist (1907)
page 153, relates that in 1889 he harpooned a large dolphin, Grampus
gris, in King George's Sound, and that whalers told him that dolphins
were at one time common in the Bight, in schools of two and three
hundred. As to dolphin flesh as food, the reader may like to be reminded
that Hawkins's men, in 1565, found dolphins "of very good colour and
proportion to behold, and no less delicate in taste" (Hakluyt's Voyages
edition of 1904 10 61). So also in 1705 a voyager to Maryland related the
capture of dolphins, "a beautiful fish to see...it is also a good fish to
eat." "Narrative of a Voyage to Maryland," printed from manuscript in
American Historical Review 12 328.)

At first it was considered that the ship was Le Naturaliste, the consort
of Le Geographe, the two vessels having become separated in a storm off
the Tasmanian coast. But as the Investigator steered towards the French
and hoisted her flag, the mistake was corrected.

Flinders took Brown, the naturalist, with him on board, because he was a
good French scholar; but Captain Baudin spoke English "so as to be
understood," and the conversation was therefore conducted for the most
part in that language. Brown was the only person present at the first
interview on the 8th, and at the second on the following morning;* (* "No
person was present at our conversations except Mr. Brown" (Flinders,
Voyage 1 190). Robert Brown was a very celebrated botanist. Humboldt
styled him "botanicorum facile princeps." His Prodromus Florae Novae
Hollandiae is a classic of price.) both taking place in the French
captain's cabin. Peron, in the first volume of the Voyage de Decouvertes,
wrote as though he were present and heard what occurred between the two
commanders. "En nous fournissant tous ces details M. Flinders se montre
d'une grande reserve sur ses operations particulieres," he wrote; and
again: "apres avoir converse plus d'une heure avec nous." But his
testimony in this, as in several other respects, is not reliable. Baudin
wrote no detailed account of the conversations, nor did Brown; but
Flinders related what occurred with the minute care that was habitual
with him. Peron's evidence is at best second-hand, and he supplemented it
with such information as could be elicited by "pumping" the sailors in
Flinders' boat.* (* "Nous apprimes toutefois par quelques-uns de ses
matelots qu'il avoit eu beaucoup a souffrir de ces memes vents de la
partie du Sud qui nous avoient ete si favorables." The boatmen were not
questioned by Peron himself, who at this time could not speak English
(Freycinet, Voyage de Decouvertes 2 Preface page 17). Freycinet admits
that Peron was not present at the interviews, but says that Baudin
related what took place with "more or less exactitude." But as Freycinet
was not present himself either at the interviews or on the ship when
Baudin related what occurred, how could he know that the version of the
commander--at whom, after Baudin's death, he never missed an opportunity
of sneering--was merely "more or less" exact?) Even then he blundered,
for some of the things stated by him were not only contrary to fact, but
could not have been ascertained from Baudin, from Flinders, or from the
sailors.

Peron stated, for example, that Flinders said that he had been
accompanied from England by a second vessel, which had become separated
from him by a violent tempest. There had been no second vessel, and
Flinders could have made no such assertion. Again, Peron wrote that
Flinders said that, hindered by contrary winds, he had not been able to
penetrate behind the islands of St. Peter and St. Francis, in Nuyts
Archipelago. Flinders made no such absurd statement. He had followed the
coast behind those islands with the utmost particularity. His track, with
soundings, is shown on his large chart of the section.* (* On this
statement the Quarterly reviewer of 1810 bluntly wrote: "Now, we will
venture not only to assert that all this is a direct falsehood (for we
have seen both the journal and charts of Captain Flinders, which are
fortunately arrived safe in this country), but also to pledge ourselves
that no such observations are to be found either in Captain Baudin's
journal or in the logbook of the Geographe." Quarterly Review 4 52. It
was a good guess. No such observation is contained in the printed log of
Le Geographe.) Once more, Peron stated that Flinders said that he had
lost a boat and eight men in the same gale as had endangered the French
ships in Bass Strait. Flinders had lost John Thistle, an officer to whom
he was deeply attached, and a crew of eight men off Cape Catastrophe, but
the incident occurred during a sudden squall. Moreover, Thistle and his
companions were drowned on February 21, whilst the storm in the
Strait--as Baudin told Flinders--occurred exactly a month later.

When Flinders got on board Le Geographe, he was received by an officer,
of whom he inquired for the commander. Baudin was pointed out to him, and
conducted him and Brown into the captain's cabin. Flinders then
"requested Baudin to show me his passport from the Admiralty, and when it
was found, and I had perused it, I offered him mine from the French
marine minister, but he put it back without inspection." The incident
serves to remind us that both commanders believed their nations to be at
war at this time. As a matter of fact, just a fortnight before the
meeting in Encounter Bay, diplomacy had patched up the brittle truce
ironically known as the Peace of Amiens (March 25). But neither Flinders
nor Baudin could have known that there was even a prospect of the
cessation of hostilities. Europe, when they last had touch of its
affairs, was still clanging with battle and warlike preparations, and the
red star of the Corsican had not yet reached its zenith. Baudin's
readiness to produce his own passport when "requested"--in a style prompt
if not peremptory, it would seem--and his indifference about that of the
English commander, should be noted as the first of a series of facts
which establish the purely peaceful character of the French expedition.

Baudin talked freely about the work upon which he had been engaged in
Tasmanian waters. Flinders inquired concerning a large island said to lie
in the western entrance of Bass Strait--that is, King Island--but Baudin
"had not seen it and seemed to doubt much of its existence." As a matter
of fact, Le Geographe had sailed quite close to the island, as indicated
on the track-chart showing her course, and that it should have been
missed indicated that the look-out was not very vigilant. Curiously
enough, too, Baudin marked down on his chart, presumably as the result of
this inquiry of Flinders, an island "believed to exist," but he put it in
the wrong place.

An incident that appealed to Flinders' dry sense of humour occurred in
reference to a chart of Bass Strait which Baudin had with him. This chart
was one which had been drawn from George Bass's sketch by Flinders
himself, and incorporated with his own more scientific chart of the north
coast of Tasmania and the adjacent islands. Bass had traversed, in his
whale-boat, the southern coast of Victoria as far as Westernport, but not
being a surveyor he had furnished only a rough outline of the lay of the
shore. Up to this time Baudin had not inquired the name of the commander
of the Investigator, and it was from not knowing to whom he was talking
that he fell into a blunder which the politeness, native to a French
gentleman, would certainly have made him wish to avoid. He began to
criticise the chart, finding great fault with the north side, but
commending the drawing of the south--that is, of northern Tasmania and
the islands near it. "On my pointing out a note upon the chart explaining
that the north side of the Strait was seen only in an open boat by Mr.
Bass, who had no good means of fixing either latitude or longitude, he
appeared surprised, not having before paid attention to it. I told him
that some other and more particular charts of the Strait and its
neighbourhood had since been published, and that if he would keep company
until next morning I would bring him a copy, with a small memoir
belonging to them. This was agreed to, and I returned with Mr. Brown to
the Investigator."

On the following morning Flinders and Brown again visited Le Geographe
with the promised chart. At the conclusion of this second interview,
Baudin requested that, should the Investigator fall in with Le
Naturaliste, Flinders would inform her captain that it was his intention
to sail round to Port Jackson as soon as the bad weather set in. "On my
asking the name of the captain of Le Naturaliste, he bethought himself to
ask mine, and finding it to be the same as the author of the chart which
he had been criticising, expressed not a little surprise, but had the
politeness to congratulate himself on seeing me." In a letter to Banks,
Flinders said that Baudin "expressed some surprise at meeting me, whom he
knew by name."* (* Historical Records of New South Wales 4 755.) He had
the name, of course, upon Flinders' chart of 1799.* (* The new chart
which Flinders gave to Baudin was published after Le Geographe left
Havre. The chart which he had in his possession was the one advertised in
the Moniteur on 8th Vendemiaire, Revolutionary Year 10. (September 30,
1800): "Nouvelle carte du detroit de Basse, situe entre la Nouvelle
Galles Meridionale, a la Nouvelle Hollande, lequel separe ces deux
parties; avec la route du vaisseau qui l'a parcouru et partie de la cote
a l'est de la Nouvelle Hollande, levee par Flinders. Prix deux francs."
This chart had been reproduced by the French Department of Marine from
the one published by Flinders in England in 1799, and several copies of
it had been supplied to Baudin and his officers for the use of the
expedition, though it was also offered for sale. See the Moniteur, 27
Thermidor, Revolutionary Year 11 (August 15, 1803), as to the engraving
of the chart at the French depot for the use of the expedition.)

At the second interview Baudin was more inquisitive than he had been on
the previous day. He had then been more disposed to talk about his own
discoveries in southern Tasmania than to ask questions about the
Investigator's work. "It somewhat surprised me," said Flinders, "that
Captain Baudin made no inquiries concerning my business upon this unknown
coast, but as he seemed more desirous of communicating information I was
happy to receive it." Another of the inaccuracies of Peron is that "M.
Flinders showed a great reserve concerning his particular operations."
There was no need of reserve, and none was shown. But "tact teaches when
to be silent," as Disraeli's Mr. Wilton observed; and an occasion for the
exercise of this virtue is presented when information likely to be
valuable is being given. Reflection, and what his officers had been able
to learn from Flinders' boat crew, however, had stimulated Baudin's
curiosity. On the 9th, therefore, he asked questions. Flinders, so far
from maintaining reserve, readily explained the discoveries he had made,
and furnished Baudin with some useful information for his own voyage. He
described how he had explored the whole of the south coast as far as the
place of meeting;* (* Manuscript Journal.) related how he had obtained
water at Port Lincoln by digging in the clay; pointed out Kangaroo Island
across the water, where an abundance of fresh meat might be procured;
"told him the name I had affixed to the island," in consequence of the
marsupials shot there; and "as proof of the refreshment to be obtained at
the island, pointed to the kangaroo skin caps worn by my boat's crew."
The return made for this courtesy was that upon the Terre Napoleon maps
the name Flinders gave was ignored, and "L'Ile Decres" was scored upon
it, this being done while the true discoverer was pent up in French
custody in an island of the Indian Ocean.

The most interesting statement made by Baudin will be dealt with in the
next chapter. The two commanders conversed on the 8th for about half an
hour, and on the second occasion, when Flinders presented the new chart
of Bass Strait, for a shorter period. Early on the morning of the 9th
they bade each other adieu. Flinders returned to the Investigator, and
the two ships sailed away--the French to retrace the coast already
followed by Flinders, but to find nothing that was new, because he had
left so little to be found; the English to proceed, first to King Island
and Port Phillip, and then through Bass Strait to Port Jackson, where the
two commanders met again.

CHAPTER 3. PORT PHILLIP.

One statement made by Captain Baudin to Flinders has been reserved for
separate treatment, because it merits careful examination.* (* The more
so as the conflict of evidence to be pointed out seems to have escaped
the notice of writers on Australian history. The contradictions are not
observed in Bonwick's Port Phillip Settlement, in Rusden's Discovery,
Survey, and Settlement of Port Phillip, in Shillinglaw's Historical
Records of Port Phillip, in Labilliere's Early History of Victoria, in
Mr. Gyles Turner's History of the Colony of Victoria, nor in any other
work with which the author is acquainted.)

He gave an account of the storm in Bass Strait which had separated him
from Le Naturaliste on March 21, and went on to say that "having since
had fair winds and fine weather, he had explored the south coast from
Westernport to our place of meeting without finding any river, inlet, or
other shelter which afforded anchorage." In his report to the Admiralty,
dated May 11, 1802, Flinders related what Baudin told him on this point,
in the following terms, which it is worth while to compare with those
used by him in his book, quoted above: "Captain Baudin informed me that
after parting with the Naturaliste in the Strait, in a heavy gale, he had
had fine weather, and had kept the coast close on board from Westernport
to the place of meeting, but that he had found no bay or place where a
vessel could anchor, the coast having but few bights in it, and those
affording nothing to interest." It will be seen that the official report
and the account given to the public twelve years later are in close
agreement. The important fact to be noticed is that Le Geographe had
slipped past Port Phillip without observing the entrance, and that her
captain was at this time entirely ignorant of the existence of the
harbour which has since become the seat of one of the greatest cities in
the southern hemisphere.

Now this statement, which is sufficiently surprising without the
introduction of complicating contradictions, becomes quite mysterious
when compared with the accounts given by Lieutenant Louis de Freycinet
and Francois Peron, the joint authors of the official history of the
French voyage. It is astonishing in itself, because a vessel sent out on
a voyage of exploration would not be expected to overlook so important a
feature as Port Phillip. Here was not a small river with a sandbar over
its mouth, but an extensive area of land-locked sea, with an opening a
mile and a half wide, flanked by rocky head-lands, fronted by usually
turbulent waters, at the head of a deep indentation of the coast. The
entrance to Port Phillip is not, it must be acknowledged, so easy to
perceive from the outside as would appear from a hasty examination of the
map. If the reader will take a good atlas in which there is a map of Port
Phillip, and will hold the plate in a horizontal position sufficiently
below the level of the eye to permit the entrance to be seen ALONG the
page, he will look at it very much as it is regarded from a ship at sea.*
(* A reduced copy of the Admiralty chart of the entrance (1907) is
prefixed to this chapter. The reader can perform the experiment with
that.) It will be noticed that a clear view into the port, except from a
particular angle, is blocked by the land on the eastern side (Point
Nepean) overlapping the tongue of land just inside the port on the
western side (Shortland's Bluff). Not until a vessel stands fairly close
and opposite to the entrance, so that the two lighthouses on the western
side, at Queenscliff, "open out," can the passage be discerned.* (*
Ferguson, Sailing Directions for Port Phillip, 1854--he was
harbour-master at the time--says (page 9): "Vessels having passed Cape
Schanck should keep a good offing in running down towards the entrance
until they open out the lighthouses, WHICH ARE NOT SEEN BEFORE BEARING
NORTH 1/2 EAST OWING TO THE HIGH LAND OF POINT NEPEAN INTERVENING."
Findley, Navigation of the South Pacific Ocean, 1863, has a remark about
the approach to the port from the west: "In approaching Port Phillip from
the westward, the entrance cannot be distinguished until Nepean Point,
the eastern point, bears north-north-east, when Shortland's Bluff, on
which the lighthouses are erected, opens out, and a view of the estuary
is obtained." A Treatise on the Navigation of Port Phillip, by Captain
Evans (a pilot of thirty-six years' experience), has also been
consulted.) Indeed, a pilot of much experience has assured the writer
that ships, whose captains know the port, are sometimes seen "dodging
about" (the phrase is the pilot's) looking for the entrance. Yet it may
be allowed that if Le Geographe had sailed close in, with the shore on
her starboard quarter, and the coast had been examined with care, she
would hardly have missed the port; and, her special business being
exploration, she certainly ought not to have missed it.* (* In Appendix
B, at the end of this chapter, are given quotations from the journals of
Murray and Flinders, in which they record how they first saw the port.)

But although Baudin said he had seen nothing "to interest," both Peron
and Freycinet, in their volumes--published years later, after they had
learnt of the discovery of Port Phillip by Lieutenant John Murray in
January 1802--stated that it was seen from Le Geographe on March 30.
Peron wrote that shortly after daybreak, the ship being in the curve of
the coast called Baie Talleyrand on the Terre Napoleon maps--that is,
between Cape Schanck on the eastern side of Port Phillip heads, and Cape
Roadknight on the western side--the port was seen and its contours were
distinguished from the masthead.* (* The matter is sufficiently important
to justify the quotation of the passages in which Peron and Freycinet
recorded the alleged observation, and these are given at length in
Appendix A to this chapter.) Peron did not say that he saw it himself. He
merely recorded that it was seen. Freycinet did not see it himself
either. He was at this time an officer on Le Naturaliste, and was not on
the Terre Napoleon coasts at all until the following year, when he
penetrated St. Vincent's and Spencer's Gulfs. He, without indicating the
time of day, or stating that the port was merely viewed from aloft,
asserted that the entrance was observed, though the ship did not go
inside.

In the first place, the statements of Peron and Freycinet are not in
agreement. To observe the entrance was one thing; to trace the contours
from the masthead quite another. To do the first was quite possible,
though not, as will be shown, from any part of the route indicated on the
track-chart of Le Geographe. But to distinguish the contours of Port
Phillip from outside, over the peninsula, was not possible.

Here, at all events, is a sharp conflict of evidence. We must endeavour
to elicit the truth.

It is certain that Baudin had no motive for concealing his knowledge, if
he knew of the existence of Port Phillip when he met Flinders. Had his
cue been to prefer claims on account of priority of discovery, he would
have been disposed to make his title clear forthwith. Frankness, too, was
an engaging characteristic of Baudin throughout. He was evidently proud
of what his expedition had already done, and was, as Flinders wrote,
"communicative." Had he discovered a new harbour, he would have spoken
about it jubilantly. Moreover, as Flinders explained to him how he could
obtain fresh water at Port Lincoln, a fellow-navigator would surely have
been glad to reciprocate by indicating the whereabouts of a harbour in
which the Investigator might possibly be glad to take shelter on her
eastern course.

It is also clear that Flinders did not misunderstand Baudin. He was an
extremely exact man, and as he said that he was "particular in detailing
all that passed," we may take it that one with whom precision was
something like a passion would be careful not to misunderstand on so
important a point. Brown, too, was with him, a trained man of science,
who would have been quick to correct his chief in the event of a
misapprehension. Flinders so far relied on Baudin's statement that when,
on April 26, he sighted Port Phillip heads himself, he thought he was off
Westernport, which his friend George Bass had discovered in 1798. "It was
the information of Captain Baudin which induced this supposition," he
wrote.* (* See also the entry in his journal, Appendix B.) It was not
till he bore up and took his bearings that he saw that he could not be at
Westernport; and he then congratulated himself on having made "a new and
useful discovery"--unaware, of course, that Murray had found Port Phillip
in the Lady Nelson in the previous January.

It must be noted in addition that Baudin wrote a letter to Jussieu, the
distinguished French botanist and member of the Institute, nine months
later, in which he gave an account of his voyage up to date.* (* Printed
in the Moniteur, 22 Fructidor, Revolutionary Year 11. (September 9,
1803).) Therein he said not a word about seeing Port Phillip, nor did he
allude to the possibility of there being a harbour between Westernport
and Encounter Bay.

Baudin, then, knew nothing about Port Phillip when he met Flinders on
April 8. But if somebody else saw it from the masthead on March 30, why
was not the fact reported to the commander? Why was he not asked the
question whether so large a bay should be explored? Again, if Le
Geographe did sight Port Phillip, why did she not enter it? Here was a
magnificent chance for discoverers. They were necessarily unaware of
Murray's good fortune in January. As far as their knowledge could have
gone, the port was absolutely new to geography. If we believe Peron and
Freycinet, surely these were the most negligent explorers who ever sailed
the seas.* (* It is true that Cook did not enter Port Jackson when he
discovered and named it on May 6, 1770. But exploration, it must always
be remembered, was not the primary object of the voyage of the Endeavour,
as it was of Le Geographe. Cook, when he achieved the greatest extent of
maritime discovery made at one time by any navigator in history, was
simply on his way homeward from a visit to Tahiti, the primary purpose of
which was to enable astronomers to observe the transit of Venus. Cook,
too, made a record of the latitude and longitude of Port Jackson. No such
entry was made by the French relative to Port Phillip, as will presently
be shown.) But if we believe that Baudin spoke the truth to Flinders--and
the absence of all reference to the port in his letter to Jussieu is
alone sufficient to show that he did--what shall we say of the statements
of Peron and Freycinet, written after Baudin's death, after they had
learnt of Murray's discovery, and when they had set themselves the task
of making the work of the expedition appear as important as possible?

Now, Baudin's statement is confirmed by five documents, the testimony of
which is convincing.

1. As an appendix to volume 3 of the Voyage de Decouvertes aux Terres
Australes, is printed the entire log of Le Geographe. The entry for March
30, 1802* (* Page 499.) (9th Germinal, Year 10 in the revolutionary
calendar, which is printed parallel with the ordinary dates), is latitude
38 degrees 33 minutes south, longitude 142 degrees 16 minutes east. The
reckoning is from the meridian of Paris, not of Greenwich.) The situation
when the entry was made, presumably at noon, was about midway between
Lorne and Apollo Bay, off the coast leading down in a south-westerly
direction to Cape Otway. The winds were east, east-north-east,
south-east, and east-south-east; weather very fine; a fresh wind blowing
("joli frais; beau temps"). It was the wind which was hindering Flinders,
sailing in the opposite direction. The column for "Remarques" opposite
this date was left blank. In other places where anything remarkable was
seen--even such a thing as a striking sunset--it was duly entered in the
proper place. But there was no entry relative to seeing Port Phillip from
the masthead, or observing the entrance, at any time. Baudin is
corroborated by the ship's log.

2. There is also appended to volume 3 of the same work a table of
geographical positions as calculated by the ship's officers. The
situation of Cape Schanck (Cap Richelieu on the French map) and of Ile
des Anglois (Phillip Island) are given; and next in the list comes Cap
Desaix (Cape Otway).* (* Page 544.) There is no record of a latitudinal
and longitudinal reading between these points. That is to say, the
position of Port Phillip is not indicated at all. In this case also the
column for "Remarques" is blank. Can we believe that if the port had been
observed, no attempt would have been made to fix the situation of it? The
latitudes and longitudes of some quite unimportant features of the coast
were duly noted. Here was a large bay, and not the slightest reference
was made to it in the table. The inevitable inference is that the French
saw nothing worth recording between Cape Schanck and Cape Otway. Baudin
is corroborated by the table of "positions geographiques."

3. The atlas issued with the first volume of the Voyage de Decouvertes in
1807 contained several coloured plates of views of coasts traversed by Le
Geographe. The work of the artists accompanying the expedition was very
beautiful; some of the plates have rarely been excelled in atlases of
this kind. These coast sketches, like narrow ribbons, prettily tinted,
were done from the deck of the ship, and represented the aspect of the
shore-line from seaward. The coasts of Bass Strait were duly represented,
but there was a gap between the Schanck and the Otway sides of Port
Phillip. Why? Obviously because the ship was not near enough to the coast
to enable the artists to see it clearly. Can we believe that men whose
particular task it was to depict the coasts traversed, would have missed
the picturesque gateway of Port Phillip if they had seen it? Baudin is
corroborated by the atlas.

4. The Moniteur of July 2, 1808, contained a long article by Lieutenant
Henri de Freycinet--elder brother of Louis--reviewing the work of the
expedition, on the occasion of the publication of Peron's first volume.
Now, Henri de Freycinet was Baudin's first lieutenant on Le Geographe. If
Port Phillip was seen from that ship on March 30, he should have seen it
if Baudin did not. If the captain was ill, or asleep, Henri de Freycinet
would be in charge. But in his article, though he described the
discoveries claimed to have been made with particular regard to the
so-called Terre Napoleon coasts, he made no reference to Port Phillip.
Baudin is corroborated by his chief officer.

5. Lastly, when Captain Hamelin returned to Europe with Le Naturaliste in
1803, Bonaparte's official organ, the Moniteur, published an article on
the voyage from information supplied partly by him and partly contained
in despatches.* (* Moniteur, 27 Thermidor, Revolutionary Year 11 (August
15, 1803).) Referring to Baudin's voyage along the "entierement
inconnues" southern coasts of Australia, the article said that he first
visited Wilson's Promontory (which it called Cap Wilson), and then
advanced along the coast till he met Captain Flinders. No reference was
made to seeing any port, although if one had been seen by any one on
board Le Geographe, it surely would have been mentioned with some amount
of pride in an official despatch.

As has already been said, Freycinet was not with Le Geographe on this
voyage, and therefore knew nothing about it personally. But before the
publication of the official history was completed, Peron died. Baudin was
also dead. Freycinet, who was preparing the maps, was instructed to
finish the work. He therefore wrote up from the notes and diaries of
other members of the expedition a geographical description of the coasts
traversed. His general plan, when describing coasts with which he had no
personal acquaintance, was to acknowledge in footnotes the particular
persons on whose notes he relied for his descriptions. But it is a
singular circumstance that when he came to describe this part of the
coast of Terre Napoleon, and to repeat, with an addition, Peron's
statement that Port Phillip was seen on March 30, he gave no footnote or
reference. In whose diary or notes was that fact recorded? It was not in
the ship's log, as we have seen. Who, then, saw Port Phillip from Le
Geographe? Henri de Freycinet did not; Baudin did not; Peron did not;
Louis de Freycinet was not there. If it were seen by a look-out man, did
no officer, or scientist, or artist on board, take the trouble to look at
it, or to make a note about it, or a drawing of it? What singular
explorers these were!

We must examine Freycinet's story a little more closely. He is not
content with saying, as Peron had done, that the port was seen from the
masthead. He is more precise--he, the man who was not there. He says:
"Nous en avons observe l'entree." That is more than Peron, who was there,
had claimed. If the "entrance" to Port Phillip was "observed" on March
30, still more incomprehensible is it that the ship did not enter, that
the fact was not mentioned in the log, that the latitude and longitude
were not taken, and that the artists neglected so excellent an
opportunity.

But that is not all. Freycinet, the man who was not there, and whose
narrative was not published till thirteen years after the voyage, has
further information to give us. He states, on whose authority we are not
told, that the country observed along part of this coast, between Cap
Suffren and Cap Marengo (that is, between Cape Patton and Cape Franklin),
presented "un aspect riant et fertile." The book containing these
descriptive words was, the reader will recollect, published in 1815. Now,
Flinders' volumes, A Voyage to Terra Australis, were published in 1814.
There he had described the country which he saw from inside the port as
presenting "a pleasing and in many places a fertile appearance." "Un
aspect riant et fertile" and "a pleasing and fertile appearance" are
identical terms. It may be a mere coincidence, though the comparison of
dates is a little startling. All the words which one can use are, as
Boileau said, "in the dictionaries"; every writer selects and arranges
them to suit his own ideas. But when Flinders said that the country
around Port Phillip looked "pleasing and fertile," he had seen it to
advantage. On May 1 he had climbed Station Peak, one of the You-Yang
group of mountains, and saw stretched at his feet the rich Werribee
Plains, the broad miles of fat pastures leading away to Mount Macedon,
and the green rolling lands beyond Geelong, opening to the Victorian
Western District. In May the kangaroo-grass would be high and waving,
full of seed, a wealth of luxuriant herbage, the value of which Flinders,
a country-bred boy, would be quick to appreciate. On the other side of
the bay he had climbed Arthur's Seat at the back of Dromana, saw behind
him the waters of Westernport which Bass had discovered, and traced the
curve of the coast as far into the blue distance as his eye could
penetrate. He had warrant for saying that the country looked "pleasing
and fertile." But how did Freycinet come to select those words, "un
aspect riant et fertile"? He was not there himself, and, as a matter of
probability, it seems most unlikely that such terms would occur to a
person who was there, either as applicable to the lands near Points
Nepean and Lonsdale, with their bastions of rock and ramparts of sand, or
to the scrubby and broken coast running down to Cape Otway, which, as a
matter of fact, is not fertile, except in little patches, and, even after
half a century of settlement, does not look as if it were. The conclusion
is hardly to be resisted that Freycinet thought he was safe in
appropriating, to describe land seen from seaward, terms which Flinders
had employed to describe land seen inside the port.

Three additional facts strengthen the conviction that Port Phillip was
never seen from Le Geographe, but that the statements of Peron and
Freycinet were made to cover up a piece of negligence in the exploration
of these coasts. The French, on their maps, lavishly bestowed names on
the capes, bays, and other features of the coasts seen by them. More will
be said on this subject in the next chapter. But meanwhile it is
important to notice that they gave no names to the headlands at the
entrance to Port Phillip, which are now known as Point Lonsdale and Point
Nepean. If they saw the entrance on March 30, why did they lose the
opportunity of honouring two more of their distinguished countrymen, as
they had done in naming Cap Richelieu (Schanck), Cap Desaix (Otway), Cap
Montaigne (Nelson), Cap Volney (Moonlight Head), and so many other
features of the coast? It is singular that while they named some capes
that do not exist--as, for instance, Cap Montesquieu, to which there is
no name on modern maps to correspond, and no projection from the coast to
which it can be applicable--they left nameless these sharp and prominent
tongues of rock which form the gateway of Port Phillip. But if they knew
nothing about the port until they learnt of its existence later at
Sydney, and saw no chart of it till an English chart was brought to their
notice, the omission is comprehensible.

Another fact which must not escape notice is that the French charts show
two lines of soundings, one along the inside of the Nepean peninsula, and
a shorter one towards the north. Mud Island is also indicated. How did
they get there? It was not even pretended in the history of the voyage
that Le Geographe went inside the heads. But see how the story grew: (a)
Baudin saw no port; (b) Peron says the port was seen from the masthead;
(c) Freycinet says the entrance was seen; (d) on the charts there are
actually soundings shown inside the harbour. Further consideration will
be given to these soundings in a later chapter.

The reader who has carefully followed the argument so far, will probably
have come to the conclusion that Captain Baudin's statement to Flinders
was perfectly true, and that the assertions of Peron and Freycinet which,
if veracious, would make Le Geographe the second ship that ever saw Port
Phillip--cannot be accepted. One other fact will clinch the case and
place the conclusion beyond doubt.

In 1812 Freycinet published a large folio volume of charts. The sixth
chart in the book is most valuable for our purpose. It is called a "Carte
generale du Detroit de Bass." Its importance lies in the fact that by
means of a dotted line it marks the track of Le Geographe throughout her
course. Now, this track-chart shows clearly that the ship was never, at
any moment, nearer than six or seven miles to Port Phillip heads. On the
greater part of her course across the so-called Baie Talleyrand she was
much farther from the land than that. On no part of her course would it
have been possible for a person at the masthead to see either the
entrance to Port Phillip or any part of the port itself. It shows that
the ship, while steering across from Cape Schanck in the direction of
Cape Otway, diverted a few miles to the north-west, and then abruptly
turned south-west. From any part of this course, the stretch of coast
where Port Phillip heads are would present the appearance of an unbroken
wall of rock, the gap being covered by the overlapping land on the
western side. The sudden north-westerly diversion, and then the sharp
turn south-west, seem to indicate that Baudin thought it well to sail up
to see if there was anything worth examining at the head of the bight,
and concluded that there was not.

There can be no more authoritative opinion on the possibility of doing
what Peron and Freycinet claimed was done, than that of a member of the
Port Phillip pilot service. The pilot steamer is almost incessantly on
duty in what the French chose to call Baie Talleyrand. The pilots know
the ground intimately; they are familiar with every part of the coast;
they see it in all weathers; they observe the entrance under all
conditions of light and atmosphere. Wishing, therefore, to confirm an
opinion already adequately supported, the writer showed two large
photographed copies of two of Freycinet's charts to an experienced member
of the pilot service, and asked him whether it would have been possible
for Port Phillip to be seen from the situation indicated, or anywhere in
the vicinity, under any conceivable conditions. He at once replied that
it was utterly impossible.* (* Indeed, he promptly said, in the direct,
emphatic speech which is the special privilege of sailors: "The man who
said he saw Port Phillip or the entrance from any point in that
neighbourhood would be lying.") Even if Le Geographe had sailed close
along shore, he further observed, nothing like the contour of the port
shown on Freycinet's chart could have been drawn from the masthead; and
the track-chart shows that the ship's course was several miles from the
coast. In fact, the chart shows more than could have been seen if the
French had sailed close up to the heads and looked inside.

Peron's statement--which is not confirmed by Freycinet--that it had at
first been determined to call the port "Port du Debut,"* (* See Appendix
A to this chapter.) is also rather puzzling. "Du Debut" of what? The
eastern extremity of the region marked "Terre Napoleon" on Freycinet's
charts is Wilson's Promontory, and the real "Port Du Debut" of the
territory so designated would be, if there is any relation between words
and things, not Port Phillip but Westernport.* (* In the Moniteur article
of 27th Thermidor, Revolutionary Year 11, Wilson's Promontory is referred
to as the point of departure: "Il visita d'abord le cap Wilson, d'ou il
prit son point de depart, et s'avanca vers l'ouest en suivant la cote
jusqu'a la distance de 15 degres de longitude.") Was there some confusion
in Peron's mind as to what port was seen? Unquestionably Le Geographe did
sight Westernport. Was it originally Baudin's intention to ignore Bass's
discovery of 1798, and, giving a French name to every feature of the
coast in Terre Napoleon, to call Westernport "Port du Debut"? That would
not have been an appropriate name for Port Phillip had it really been
seen on the morning of March 30, as it most certainly was not. But, it
being determined to denominate the land between Wilson's Promontory and
Cape Adieu "Terre Napoleon," Westernport might well have been counted as
the port of the beginning of the exploration of the territory, and, as
such, it would truly have been the Port du Debut. Freycinet, writing in
1824, acknowledged that Peron, "having written before the charts were
finished, made some mistakes relative to geography."* (* Preface to the
second edition of the Voyage de Decouvertes (1824) 1 page 16.) It is
possible that this was one of his errors; and it would be an easy one for
a man to make who was not familiar with the coast. But assuredly there
was no mere error on Freycinet's part.

What, then, are we to make of the statements of Peron and Freycinet?

The latter officer tells us, in one of his prefaces, that the French
Government was dissatisfied with the work of the expedition, and was at
first disposed to refuse to publish any record of it. Sir Joseph Banks,
closely in touch with movements relative to scientific work, had news of
the displeasure of Napoleon's ministers, and wrote to Flinders, then a
prisoner: "M. Baudin's voyage has not been published. I do not hear that
his countrymen are well satisfied with his proceedings" (June 1805).
Finally it was determined to issue a history of the expedition; but to
have published any charts without showing Port Phillip would have been to
make failure look ridiculous. By this time Freycinet, who was preparing
the charts, knew of the existence of the port. The facts drive to the
conclusion that the French had no drawing of Port Phillip of their own
whatever, but that their representation of it was copied from a drawing
of which possession had been acquired--how? It is quite clear that
Freycinet had to patch up the omissions in the work of his companions
from some source, to hide the negligent exploration which had missed one
of the two most important harbours in Australia. We shall hereafter see
how he did it.

APPENDIX A.

The following are the two passages from Peron and Freycinet to which
reference is made in the text. Peron wrote (Voyage de Decouvertes 1 316):
"Le 30 mars, a la pointe du jour, nous portames sur la terre, que nous
atteignimes bientot. Un grand cap, qui fut appele Cap Richelieu [it is
now Cape Schanck] se projette en avant, et forme l'entree d'une baie
profonde, que nous nommames Baie Talleyrand. Sur la cote orientale de
cette baie, et presque vers son fond, se trouve un port, dont on
distinguoit assez bien les contours du haut des mats; nous le designames
sous le nom de Port du Debut; mais ayant appris dans la suite qu'il avoit
ete reconnu plus en detail par le brick Anglois The Lady Nelson, et qu'il
avoit ete nomme Port Philipp [sic] nous lui conserverons avec d'autant
plus de plaisir ce dernier nom, qu'il rappelle celui du fondateur d'une
colonie dans laquelle nous avons trouve des secours si genereux et si
puissans."

Freycinet wrote (Voyage de Decouvertes 3 115): "Nous venons de vanter la
beaute du port Western; mais celui que l'on rencontre a peu de distance
vers l'O ne paroit pas moins recommandable, tant par son etendue que par
commodite. Nous en avons observe l'entree le 30 mars 1802, sans toutefois
penetrer dans son interieur. Les Anglois, qui l'ont examine avec details,
lui ont donne le nom de Port Phillip en l'honneur du premier gouverneur
de la colonie du Port Jackson...Vers l'interieur on voit de hautes
montagnes; elles se rapprochent du rivage a la hauteur du Cap Suffren; et
de ce point jusqu'au cap Marengo, la cote, plus elevee encore, est d'un
aspect riant et fertile."

APPENDIX B.

The reader may find it convenient to have appended also, the passages
from the journals of Murray and Flinders, in which they record their
first view of Port Phillip. These journals were used by Labilliere in
writing his Early History of Victoria (1 78 and 110). Murray's was then
at the Admiralty; it is now in the Public Record Office. That of Flinders
was placed at the disposal of Labilliere by the distinguished grandson of
the explorer, Professor Flinders Petrie, whose great work in revealing to
us moderns an ampler knowledge of the oldest civilisations, those of
Syria and Egypt, is not a little due, one thinks, to capacity inherited
from him who revealed so much of the lands on which the newest of
civilisations, that of Australia, is implanted.

Murray, in the Lady Nelson, sailing close along-shore west from
Westernport on January 5, 1802, saw a headland bearing west-north-west
distant about twelve miles, and an opening in the land that had the
appearance of a harbour north-west ten or twelve miles. When within a
mile and a half, he wrote: "With closer examination of my own, and going
often to the masthead, I saw that the reef did nearly stretch across the
whole way, but inside saw a fine sheet of smooth water of great extent.
From the wind blowing on this shore, and fresh, I was obliged to haul off
under a press of sail to clear the land, but with a determination to
overhaul it by and by, as no doubt it has a channel into it, and is
apparently a fine harbour of large extent." Murray did not enter the port
until after his mate, Bowen, had found the way in, with a boat, in
February.

Flinders, after visiting King Island, resumed his work along the mainland
on April 25. He wrote in his journal: "Until noon no idea was entertained
of any opening existing in this bight; but at that time an opening became
more and more conspicuous as we ran farther west, and high land at the
back appeared to be at a considerable distance. Still, however, I
entertained but little hopes of finding a passage sufficiently deep for a
ship, and the bearings of the entrance prevented me from thinking it the
west entrance into Westernport." In the journal, as in the report to the
Admiralty, and, twelve years later, in his book, Flinders wrote that it
was what Baudin told him that made him think there could be no port in
the neighbourhood. "From appearances I at first judged this port to be
Westernport, although many others did not answer; though Captain Baudin
had met with no harbour after leaving that, and from his account he had
fine weather and kept the shore close on board to the time of his meeting
us."

CHAPTER 4. TERRE NAPOLEON AND ITS NOMENCLATURE.

What happened to Matthew Flinders when, after a brief sojourn in Sydney
Harbour, he left to continue his explorations in the northern waters of
Australia, is generally known. While he was at work in the Gulf of
Carpentaria, the condition of the Investigator caused him much
uneasiness, and when she was overhauled, the rotten state of her timbers
compelled him to return. She was then condemned as unseaworthy. On again
sailing north in the Porpoise, he was wrecked on the Barrier Reef. Making
his way back to Sydney in a small open boat built from the wreckage, and
well named the Hope, he was given the use of the Cumberland, a mere barge
of only twenty-nine tons, in which to carry himself and part of his
shipwrecked company to England. Compelled by the leaky condition of the
crazy little craft, and the inefficiency of the pumps, to put into
Mauritius, then a French possession, he was detained as a prisoner by the
French governor, General Decaen, for six and a half years.

There is no need, for our immediate purpose, to linger over these
occurrences, inviting as they are, with a glint of Stevensonian romance
in the bare facts, and all the pathos that attaches to the case of a
brave and blameless man thwarted and ruined by perversity and malignity.
Frequently have the facts been wrongly written, as for instance when
Blair states, in his Cyclopaedia of Australia, that Baudin in Le
Geographe called at Mauritius after Flinders was imprisoned, and, instead
of procuring his release, "persuaded the Governor to confine him more
rigorously." Poor Baudin--he had been in his grave three months when
Flinders appeared at the island in dire distress, and Le Geographe itself
left the day before his arrival.

What is clear, however, is that Flinders was detained in a captivity that
broke down his health and wrecked his useful life, first on General
Decaen's own responsibility, and later--though the evidence on this point
is not specific--in accordance with influences from Paris; and that
during his imprisonment an attempt was made to deprive him of credit for
his discoveries by the publication of the first volume of the French
official history and its accompanying atlas.

The atlas published in 1807* (* The date on the imprint of volume 1,
though the charts bear the date 1808. A second part of the atlas,
containing a few additional small charts, was issued in 1811.) contained
two large charts, the work of Lieutenant Louis de Freycinet. The first
was a "Carte generale de la Nouvelle Hollande," with the title inscribed
upon a scroll clutched in the talons of an imperial eagle, a most
fearsome wild-fowl, that with aggressive beak and flaming eye seemed to
assert a claim to the regions denominated on what it held. This was the
most complete map of Australia published up to the date named. The second
was entitled "Carte generale de la Terre Napoleon." In this case the
title was held by feathered Mercury in graceful flight, displaying the
motto "Orbis Australis dulces exuviae." An exquisite little vignette
under the title (by Lesueur) should not escape notice. Upon both charts,
the whole of southern Australia, from Wilson's Promontory to Cape Adieu
in the Bight, was styled Terre Napoleon. To nearly every cape, bay,
island, peninsula, strait, and gulf in this extensive region was affixed
a name, in most cases, though not in all, that of some Frenchman of
eminence during the revolutionary and Napoleonic period. The Spencer's
Gulf and St. Vincent's Gulf, which Flinders had discovered, were
respectively named Golfe Bonaparte and Golfe Josephine.* (* The latter
was named "in honour of our august Empress," said Peron. It was a pretty
piece of courtiership; but unfortunately Napoleon's nuptial arrangements
were in a state of flux, and when the trenchant Quarterly reviewer of
1810 came to discuss the work, the place of Josephine was occupied by
Marie Louise. The reviewer saucily suggested: "Bonaparte has since
changed it for Louisa's Gulf.") The large island which Flinders had
pointed out to Baudin, and which he informed that officer he had named
Kangaroo Island, became Ile Decres. The Yorke's Peninsula of Flinders was
styled Presqu'Ile Cambaceres; his Investigator Strait became Detroit de
Lacepede; and his Backstairs Passage, Detroit de Colbert. To-day the
Terre Napoleon charts look like a partial index to the Pantheon and Pere
Lachaise. Laplace, Buffon, Volney, Maupertuis, Montaigne, Lannes, Pascal,
Talleyrand, Berthier, Lafayette, Descartes, Racine, Moliere, Bernadotte,
Lafontein, Condillac, Bossuet, Colbert, Rabelais, D'Alembert, Sully,
Bayard, Fenelon, Voltaire,* (* Voltaire's name is on the Terre Napoleon
sectional chart, but it seems to have been crowded out of the large Carte
Generale. As there is no actual bay in Spencer's Gulf to correspond with
the Baie Voltaire shown on the Terre Napoleon chart, the omission does
not matter much. But one would have liked to have Voltaire's opinion on
the subject of his exclusion.) Jeanne d'Arc, L'Hopital, Massena, Turenne,
Jussieu, Murat--soldiers, statesmen, scientists, authors, philosophers,
adorn with their memorable names these most un-Gallic shores. The
Bonaparte family was pleasantly provided for. Thus we find the Isles
Jerome, Baie Louis and Baie Hortense (after Josephine's daughter).
Outside the Terre Napoleon region, on the north coast, the name Golfe
Joseph Bonaparte bespoke geographical immortality for another member of
the family. But we miss Rousseau and Turgot, deplore the absence of
Corneille and La Bruyere, and feel that at least a sand-bank or two might
have been found for Quesnay and the economists, if only as a set-off
against the disparagement of Burke.

Yet it is on the whole an illustrious company, representative of the best
and brightest in French intellect and character. When the brave old
Spanish navigators of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries discovered
a new port or cape, they commonly gave it the name of the saint on whose
day in the calendar it was found; and the map of Central and South
America is a memorial at once of their piety and their enterprise. But
Baudin's expedition having no such guide--Comte's Positivist Calendar, if
not of later date, would have been useful--their selection of names was
quite an original effort. Unfortunately, the "discoveries" to which the
names were applied were not original.

Two facts are incontrovertible: (1) that Flinders had discovered and
charted the whole of the south coast of Australia from Fowler Bay to
Encounter Bay--except the south of Kangaroo Island, which is represented
by a dotted line on his charts--before he met Le Geographe on April 8,
1802; and (2) that the French officers knew that he had done so. Flinders
explained to Baudin the discoveries which he had made when they met in
Encounter Bay, and afterwards when the Investigator and the French ships
lay together in Port Jackson he showed him one of his finished charts to
illustrate what he had done. "So far from any prior title being set up at
that time to Kangaroo Island and the parts westward," wrote Flinders,
"the officers of the Geographe always spoke of them as belonging to the
Investigator."

The French names would appear to have been applied by Baudin, if
Freycinet is to be believed; for he uses the phrase "les nommes que
Baudin a donnes."* (* Voyage de Decouvertes 2 Preface page 23.) But when
Freycinet wrote those words Baudin was dead, and the publication of the
charts had evoked much indignation on account of the gross wrong done to
Flinders. In one or two cases the names were certainly not Baudin's, as
will be made clear in a later chapter.* (* Take, for instance, Ile
Decres, the name given to Kangaroo Island. Decres did not become Minister
for the Navy till October 3, 1801. Baudin was then at sea, and probably
never knew anything about Decres' accession to office. It is pretty well
certain that the name was not given to the island until after the return
of the expedition, when Baudin was dead.) Certainly Baudin was in no
sense responsible for the publication. Peron and Freycinet were the men
who put their names to the charts and volumes; and they were by no means
exculpated by the suggestion that Baudin devised a nomenclature
calculated to deprive Flinders of the credit that he had won. Both Peron
and Freycinet knew, too, when they issued their volume and atlas, that
Flinders was being held in captivity in Mauritius; and the dead captain
was certainly not guilty of the meanness and mendacity of hurrying
forward the issue of books that pretended to discoveries never made,
while the real discoverer was prevented from asserting his own rightful
claims.

That the publication was hurried forward as soon as Napoleon's government
gave the order to print, is evident from the incompleteness of the atlas
of 1807. It contained a table of charts--"Tableau General des planches
qui composent l'atlas historique"--which were not inserted in the book;
and in one of the four copies of this rare volume which the author has
been able to examine, the previous owner, or the bookseller from whom it
was purchased, collating the contents with the table, had pencilled in
the margin, "All wanting," being under the impression that the copy was
imperfect. But the charts detailed in the table were not issued with the
book. They were not ready, and the table stands as an eloquent indicator
of the hurry in which the publication was performed. The first volume of
the Voyage de Decouvertes contains numerous marginal references to charts
not contained in the atlas issued with it. Readers of the book must have
been puzzled by these references,* (* As the present writer was when he
began to study the subject closely, and as the Quarterly reviewer was in
1810. He said: "The atlas is of quarto size; it contains not a single
chart nor any sketch or plan of a coast, island, bay, or harbour, though
frequent references are made to such in the margin of the printed volume"
(page 60). The reviewer should have said, "except the two cartes
generales" described on a previous page.) when they turned to the atlas
and found no charts corresponding with them. Freycinet's complete folio
volume of charts was not published till 1812, five years after the issue
of the book which they were necessary to explain. Flinders had then been
released; but it is significant that he was held in the clutches of
General Decaen, despite constant demands for his liberation, until the
preparation of the French charts was sufficiently advanced to make it
impossible for his own to be issued until theirs had been placed before
the world.

Flinders, generous in his judgments of other men even when smarting under
great grievances, put forth an excuse for Peron, suggesting that he had
acted under pressure. "How, then, came M. Peron to advance what was so
contrary to truth?" he wrote. "Was he a man destitute of all principle?
My answer is, that I believe his candour to have been equal to his
acknowledged abilities, and that what he wrote was from overruling
authority, and smote him to the heart. He did not live to finish the
second volume."

This would be an acceptable way of disposing of the question if we could
reasonably accept the explanation. But can we? Freycinet denied that any
pressure was exerted. Those who knew Peron's character, he wrote,* (*
Voyage de Decouvertes 2 page 21.) were aware that he would have refused
to do anything with which his conscience could reproach him. He was so
able and zealous a man of science, that we should like to believe that of
him. justice demands that we should give full weight to every favourable
factor in the case as affecting him. Flinders was a British naval
officer, and naval men at that period were disposed to see the hand of
Napoleon in every bit of mischief. But the "pressure" theory does not
sustain examination.

The task thrust upon Peron in the writing of the historical narrative of
the voyage was one for which he had not prepared himself, and which did
not properly pertain to him. The death of Baudin, whose work this would
naturally have been, compelled the naturalist to become historian. He had
not kept the log, and it may be reasonably assumed that he had not
concerned himself in a particular degree with those events of which he
would have made careful notes had it been intended from the beginning
that he should be the official recorder. He had applied himself with
passionate energy to the collection and classification of zoological
specimens. This was his special vocation, and he pursued it worthily. It
is probably safe to say that no expedition, French or English, that ever
came down to Australasian waters, added so much that was new to the
world's scientific knowledge, or accumulated so much material, as did
this one whose chief naturalist was Francois Peron. When it is added that
two of the greatest figures in British scientific history, Darwin and
Huxley, were among the workers in this fruitful field, it will be
admitted that the acknowledgment is not made in any niggard spirit. But
we are now concerned with Peron as historian of what related to Terre
Naploeon and the surrounding circumstances. Here his statements have been
shown to be unreliable. It is probable that he wrote largely from memory;
almost certainly from insufficient data. Further, he was weak and ill
when engaged upon the book. The hardships and unhealthy conditions of the
voyage had undermined his constitution. One would conclude from his style
of writing that he was by temperament excitable and easily subject to
depression. A zealous savant, to whom fishes and birds, beetles and
butterflies, were the precious things of the earth, and for whom the
discovery of a new species was as great a source of joy as a glorious
victory was to his imperial master, Peron appeals to us as a pathetic
figure whom one would rather screen from blame than otherwise. He
suffered severely, and did his final work under the difficulty of
breaking health. He died in 1810, before his second volume was ready for
publication.

Freycinet wrote a series of notes by way of preface to volumes 2 and 3,
in attempted justification of the Terre Napoleon maps.* (* The second
volume of the Voyage de Decouvertes was published--out of its due
order--in 1816, the third in 1815.) He was put on the defensive because
"the audacious attempt which was made in the first volume of this work,
to rob Captain Flinders of the well-earned merit of his nautical labours
and discoveries, while he was basely and barbarously kept in prison in a
French colony, was regarded with becoming indignation throughout Europe,
and with shame by the better part of the French nation."* (* Quarterly
Review volume 17 (1817) page 229.) That that is a fair description of the
state of feeling among people concerned with the advancement of
knowledge, is beyond question; and the French above all, with their love
of enterprise, their sentiment of honour, their eager applause of high
achievement, their chivalrous sense of justice, and their quick sympathy
with suffering wrongly inflicted and bravely borne, would have no taste
for laurels plucked in their name from the brow of him who was entitled
to wear them. Thoroughly repugnant to French intellect and feeling was
conduct of this description. National animosities were more bitter at
this period than they have ever been at any other time, but science knows
no nationality. Even when the two governments had ceased to have
relations with each other, we still find English and French men of
science communicating on friendly terms; and Napoleon himself was willing
to grant the requests of an English savant while English arms and English
diplomacy were at furious war with him. Thus Sir Joseph Banks, who was a
corresponding member of the Institute of France, could write in 1805, "I
have obtained the release of five persons from the gracious condescension
of the Emperor, the only five, I believe, that have been regularly
discharged from their parole."

Freycinet, then, had to defend his charts. But there never was a more
complete example of the remark that "qui s'excuse s'accuse." He argued
that when Le Geographe cruised along the coasts discovered by Flinders,
there was no published work in which they were described, therefore the
French were justified in applying their own names. But this plea ignored
the fact that if the coasts were not charted in any work published before
1807, they had been, to the full knowledge of the French officers,
charted by Flinders, whose work would have been published earlier if he
had not been forcibly detained. Again he argued* (* Preface to volume 3.)
that, inasmuch as "jamais Peron ni moi"--where Freycinet assumed part of
the responsibility--knew of the work done by Flinders until his book was
published, the work of the French was truly one of discovery; and as to
the names given by the English navigator, "it is certain that we could
not employ them without knowing them." But it was not true that
Freycinet, Peron, or Baudin was unaware of the discoveries made by
Flinders. Even were there not his specific statement that he explained
his discoveries and showed one of his charts to illustrate them, it would
be incredible that while the French and English ships lay together for
some weeks at Port Jackson, with tents erected on the same piece of
ground, the officers frequently meeting on friendly terms, Freycinet and
Peron should not have learnt what the Investigator had been doing. Both
the French authors are individually mentioned by Flinders as having been
present on one or other of these occasions, and Freycinet does not deny
the statement. Further, Captain Hamelin reported to the French
Government, in 1803, that Flinders had traced the coast from the Leeuwin
to Encounter Bay, and had discovered a large and beautiful island which
he had named "L'Ile des Kangaroux."* (* Moniteur, 27 Thermidor,
Revolutionary Year 11.)

It is true that the French were not acquainted with Flinders' names,
except in the one case of Kangaroo Island. He told Baudin what name he
had given in that case. Nevertheless they ignored it, and called the
island Ile Decres. But even when they did know of the names given to
features of the coast by a previous English navigator, Peron and
Freycinet disregarded them. Grant's Narrative of the Voyage of the Lady
Nelson was published, together with his eye-chart of the coast from Cape
Banks to Wilson's Promontory, in 1803. Flinders states positively that
Grant's "discoveries were known to M. Peron and the French expedition in
1802";* (* Voyage 1 201.) as indeed we might well suppose, for Grant was
not the man to allow any one with whom he came in contact to remain
unaware of his achievements, and he was in Sydney just before the French
arrived there. They would hear of him from many people. Yet Grant's
names, inscribed in plain print on his published chart, were all ignored
on the Terre Napoleon charts--his Cape Nelson becoming Cap Montaigne; his
Cape Otway, Cap Desaix; his Cape Schanck, Cap Richelieu; and so forth.

The contention that the south coast exploration of the French was
"entirely a work of discovery,"* (* Freycinet, 2 page 23.) although they
were forestalled in it by Flinders and Grant, is neither true nor
sensible. If it could be held that the voyage of a vessel sailing without
a chart or a pilot along a coast previously unknown to its officers was
"entirely a work of discovery," then a ship that should sail under such
conditions along any piece of coast--say from Boulogne to La Hague--would
accomplish "a work of discovery." Discovery is a matter of priority, or
the word is meaningless.

Freycinet's notes nowhere meet the gravest feature of the case--the
prolongation of the imprisonment of Flinders until the French could
complete their own charts for publication. The talk about not knowing
what Flinders' names were, the affected ignorance of his prior claims,
were crudely disingenuous. Freycinet knew perfectly where Flinders was,
and why his charts were not issued. The Moniteur contained several
references to his case. Sir Joseph Banks repeatedly pressed leading
members of the Institute to lend their influence to secure his
liberation. But Freycinet, who had shared in the generous hospitality of
the British governor in Sydney--extended at a time when the French crews
were sorely stricken--and should have been moved by gratitude, to say
nothing of justice, to help in undoing an act of wrong to a
fellow-navigator, does not seem to have taken the slightest step in this
direction, nor does he in any of his writings express any regret
concerning the unhappy fate that overtook the English captain.

The claim made in behalf of Baudin's expedition can best be stated in the
language of Peron. Dentrecasteaux, he wrote, not having advanced beyond
the islands of St. Peter and St. Francis, which form the extremity of
Nuyts Land, and the English not having carried their researches farther
than Westernport, "it follows that all the portion between the
last-mentioned port and Nuyts Land was unknown at the time when we
arrived on these shores." Peron's words were not candid. It is true that
part of the shores in question were unknown when Baudin's ships
"arrived." They "arrived" off Cape Leeuwin in May 1801, before Flinders
left England, though not before Grant had discovered his stretch of
coast. (Grant reached Sydney, having roughly traced the coast from Cape
Banks to Cape Schanck, on December 16, 1800.) If, however, Peron meant to
convey that the coasts were unknown when Baudin's ships actually sailed
along them, he stated what was not the case. Let us hear Flinders in
reply. "M. Peron should not have said that the south coast from
Westernport to Nuyts Land was then unknown, but that it was unknown to
them, for Captain Grant, of the Lady Nelson, had discovered the eastern
part from Westernport to the longitude 140 degrees 14 minutes in the year
1800, before the French ships sailed from Europe, and on the west I had
explored the coast and islands from Nuyts Land to Cape Jervis in 138
degrees 10 minutes." In other words, Grant's eye-chart connected up the
coast between the extremity of George Bass's exploration, Westernport,
and Cape Banks to the east, while Flinders had traversed the coast
between Nuyts Land and Encounter Bay to the west, leaving a gap of only
about fifty leagues of sandy shore, upon which there is "neither river,
inlet, or place of shelter," that was actually discovered by Baudin.
Flinders not only admitted that the French had discovered this
particularly barren and uninteresting stretch of land, but marked it upon
his charts* (* Cf. plate 4 in Flinders' Atlas, for example.) as
"discovered by Captain Baudin, 1802." The French on their charts,
however, made not the slightest reference to the discoveries of either
Flinders or Grant.

The true Terre Napoleon, therefore, if the name were to survive at all,
would be from a point north-west of Cape Banks in the state of South
Australia, to the mouth of the river Murray in Encounter Bay. The names
marked on a modern map indicate the sort of country that it is in the
main. Chinaman's Wells, M'Grath's Flat, Salt Creek, Martin's Washpool,
Jim Crow's Flat, and Tilley's Swamp are examples. They are not
noble-sounding designations to inscribe at the back of coasts once
dignified by the name of the greatest figure in modern history. It is
rather to be regretted that the name Terre Napoleon has slipped off
modern maps. It is historically interesting. When Eric the Red, as the
Saga tells us, discovered Greenland, he so called it because "men would
be the more readily persuaded thither if the land had a good name." Most
will agree that Terre Napoleon sounds a bit better than Pipe Clay Plain
or Willow Swamp, which are other choice flowers in the same garden.* (*
These "virginal chaste names" are taken from the map of South Australia,
by the Surveyor-General of that State, 1892.)

There is no evidence to warrant the belief that Napoleon had anything
whatever to do with affixing his name to the territory to which it was
applied, or with the nomenclature of the features of the coast. Nor would
there be anything remarkable in the use of the name Terre Napoleon, if
the French had really discovered the region so described. In every part
of the world there are lands named after the rulers of the nations to
which the discoverers or founders belonged. Raleigh named Virginia "from
the maiden Queen"; the two Carolinas preserve the name of the amorous
monarch who granted the original charter of colonisation "out of a Pious
and good intention for ye propogacion of ye Christian faith amongst ye
Barbarous and Ignorant Indians, ye Inlargement of his Empire and
Dominions, and Inriching of his Subjects"; and two states of Australia
commemorate by their names the great Queen who occupied the British
throne when they were founded. There would have been nothing unusual or
improper in the action of the French in styling the country from Wilson's
Promontory to Cape Adieu "Terre Napoleon," except that they did not
discover it. What they did excites a feeling akin to derision, because it
bore the character of "jumping a claim," to use an Australian mining
phrase.

Nor is it to be inferred that affixing the name was intended to assert
possession. An examination of the large chart of Australia shows that the
whole of the coast-line, except this particular stretch, was previously
named. There was Terre de Nuyts on the south-west; Terre de Leeuwin,
Terre d'Endrels, Terre d'Endracht were on the west; Terre de Witt on the
north-west; Terre d'Arnheim and Terre de Carpentarie on the north. New
South Wales was marked as occupying the whole of the east. The styling of
the freshly discovered south Terre Napoleon was a mere piece of
courtiership. If Napoleon had ever been strong enough to strike a blow at
the British in Australia, the probabilities are that he would have
endeavoured to oust them from New South Wales, and would not have
troubled himself very much about the coasts that were named after him. It
was his way to strike at the heart of his enemy, and the heart of British
settlement in Australia was located at Port Jackson.

It has been represented in one of the best books in English on the
Napoleonic period,* (* Dr. Holland Rose's Life of Napoleon 1 381.) that
"the names given by Flinders on the coasts of Western and South
Australia, have been retained owing to the priority of his investigation,
but the French names have been kept up on the coast between the mouth of
the Murray and Bass Straits for the same reason." That statement,
however, is very much too wide. Capes Patton, Otway, Nelson, Bridgewater,
Northumberland and Banks, Portland Bay and Julia Percy Island, all lie
between the points mentioned, and all of them were named by Grant, who
first discovered them and marked them on his chart. None of the French
names is properly in present employment east of Cape Buffon; for their
Cap Boufflers, which is marked on a few maps, is really the Cape Banks of
Grant. The only names freshly applied by Baudin to natural features of
the mainland on the Terre Napoleon charts, and which are in current use,
are Cape Buffon, Cape Lannes, Rivoli Bay, Cape Jaffa, Cape Rabelais, Cape
Dombey, Guichen Bay, Cape Bernoulli, Lacepede Bay, and Cape Morard de
Galles. Some or other of these names may be found, in some order, on some
modern map, but the sequence is variable, and they are not all to be
found on any single map with which the author is acquainted; because
there are more names than there are natural capes and bays to which they
can apply. The remainder of the French names between Lacepede Bay and
Cape Jervis, and most of those in the more easterly section, are not
marked on any current map, because in some instances they do not
represent features of the coast which are sufficiently pronounced to
require names, whilst in other cases they are applied to islands, capes,
and bays that do not exist.* (* The difficulty of identifying the
features marked on the Terre Napoleon charts is made clear by comparing
them with a few good modern maps. Thus, taking them from south-east to
north-west, they appear on the French charts in the following order: 1,
Cap Buffon; 2, Cap Lannes; 3, Baie de Rivoli; 4, Cap de Jaffa; 5, Cap
Rabelais; 6, Cap Dombey; 7, Baie de Guichen; 8, Cap Bernoulli; 9, Baie
Lacepede; 10, Cap Morard de Galles; 11, Cap Fermat; 12, Cap Monge 13, Cap
Caffarelli; 14, Cap Villars; 15, Baie Mollien; 16, Cap Mollien 17, Baie
Cretet; 18, Cap Cretet; 19, Iles Decaen; 20, Cap Decaen; 21, Cap
Montelivet. On the large Continental map constructed by the Department of
Lands and Survey, State of Victoria, 1879, the order of the names
included is as follows: 1, Buffon; 2, Rivoli; 3, Lannes; 4, Guichen; 5,
Jaffa; 6, Lacepede. Rabelais, Dombey, Bernoulli, and the rest are
omitted, the draftsman evidently being unable to find features to which
to apply them. On the large map compiled in the office of the
Surveyor-General, State of South Australia, 1892, the order of the names
is: 1, Buffon; 2, Rivoli; 3, Rabelais; 4, Lannes; 5, Dombey; 6, Guichen;
7, Jaffa; 8, Lacepede. On the excellent map in M'Lean's New Atlas of
Australia, 1886, we find: 1, Buffon; 2, Rivoli; 3, Lannes; 4, Guichen; 5,
Jaffa; 6, Lacepede. Flinders, on his separate chart of this part of the
coast, found features for the names of Buffon, Lannes, Rivoli, and
Bernoulli, but left out Rabelais, Dombey, Guichen, and Lacepede. In no
case is the cape or bay on the Terre Napoleon chart of this part of the
coast a tolerably good representation of an actuality.) Where are Cap
Monge, Cap Caffarelli, Cap Mollien, Cap du Mont St. Bernard, Ile
Latrelle, or Baie Descartes? They are not to be found. Freycinet* (*
Preface to the 1824 edition of the Voyage de Decouvertes page 13, note.)
complained that Flinders, on his charts, had erroneously applied the
French names between Cap Monge and Cap Lannes. It was a singular
complaint to make, seeing that Flinders gave the French full credit for
their discoveries, whilst they omitted all reference to his work on their
charts. But Flinders' difficulty was that of all later map-makers: he
could not find all the places to which Baudin had given names. He did his
best; but it is evidently easier to sprinkle a coast-line with the
contents of a biographical dictionary, than to fit all the names in.

The French cartography of the portions of the coast eastward of the two
gulfs was so badly done, in fact, that many of the features indicated on
the charts are mere geographical Mrs. Harrises--there "ain't no sich"
places. The coast was not surveyed at all, but was sketched roughly,
inaccurately, and out of scale; so that even the sandy stretch now known
as the Coorong, which is about as featureless as a railway embankment,
was fitted with names and drawn with corrugations as though it were as
jagged as a gigantic saw. Our respect for such names as Montesquieu and
Descartes causes us to regret that they should have been wasted on a cape
and a bay that geography knows not; and our abiding interest in the
sinister genius of Talleyrand fosters the wish that his patronymic had
been reserved for some other feature than the curve of the coast which
holds "the Rip" of Port Phillip, though in one sense he who was so wont
to "fish in troubled waters" is not inaptly associated with that boil of
sea."*

(* "Loud-voiced and reckless as the wild tide-race
That whips our harbour mouth,"

wrote Mr. Rudyard Kipling ("Song of the English") of the people of
Melbourne. It is believed that he meant to be complimentary.)

The south and west of Kangaroo Island were, however, first charted by
Baudin, and his names survive there. Flinders had marked these shores
with a dotted line on his chart, to signify that he had not surveyed
them. He intended to complete this bit of work on his return, but he was
"caught in the clutch of circumstance," and was never permitted to
return. Such names as Cape Borda, Cape Linois, Maupertuis Bay, Cape
Gautheaume, Bougainville Bay, and a few others, preserve the memory of
the French expedition on Kangaroo Island. A rock, known as Frenchman's
Rock, upon which a record of the visit was cut, also survives there.

A few months after the publication of the Terre Napoleon charts in 1807,
the truth about the matter became known. Sir Joseph Banks, who had been
kept well informed by Flinders about the work which he had performed, and
who had done all that was possible to obtain his release from Mauritius,
was influential in scientific circles throughout Europe. Fortunately, he
had ample material at his disposal. Flinders had sent home some finished
charts from Sydney, and during his imprisonment he wrote up a manuscript
journal which he succeeded in getting conveyed to England. It was this
manuscript which the Admiralty permitted to be perused by the writer of
the powerful Quarterly Review article of August 1810. The feeling of
indignation evoked by the treatment which the navigator received was
intensified when the publication of his Voyage and his charts in 1814
showed the measure of his shining merits--his thoroughness, his accuracy,
his diligence, the beauty of his drawings, the vast extent of the
entirely new work which he had done, and the manliness, gentleness,
courage, and fairness of his personal character.

In addition to the discredit, of which he had to bear his full share,
Freycinet was involved in perplexities of another kind. It was a
convenient piece of flattery to name the two great gulfs after Napoleon
and Josephine when they were Emperor and Empress; but the courtier-like
compliment was embarrassing when Josephine was supplanted by Marie
Louise, and it became offensive when Napoleon himself was overthrown and
a Bourbon once more occupied the throne of France. Many of the other
names, too, were those of men no longer in favour. Yet the earlier
volumes of the Voyage de Decouvertes had referred in the text to the
names on the French charts as though they formed a final system of
nomenclature. What was poor Freycinet to do in completing the work? Here,
indeed, was a sailor hoist to his own yard-arm with his own halyard. The
work could not be dropped, since faith had to be kept with purchasers. In
the event, the old names were employed in the text of the completed book,
but a fresh atlas was issued (1817) with the name Terre Napoleon wiped
off the principal chart, most of the names changed to those given by
Flinders and Grant, and a neat note in the corner taking the place of the
former eagle--which was moulting; no longer the screaming fowl it used to
be--announcing that "this map of New Holland is an exact reduction of
that contained in the first edition."* (* "Cette carte de la
Nouvelle-Hollande est une reduction exacte de celle contenue dans la
premiere edition du Voyage aux Terres Australes.") The announcement was
not quite true. It was not "une reduction exacte." The imperial bird had
flown, and the names had undergone systematic revision. The Bonaparte
family were pitilessly evicted. It was a new and smaller map, with a new
allocation of names. Freycinet's name appeared upon it, and he probably
wrote the inscription in the corner.

CHAPTER 5. DID THE FRENCH USE FLINDERS' CHARTS?

Flinders, in the decrepit little Cumberland, put into Port Louis,
Mauritius, on December 16, 1803. He was not permitted to sail out again
till July 1810; and then he was a broken man, smitten with diseases, the
painful product of exposure, shipwreck, confinement in a tropical
climate, anxiety, and bitter years of heart-sickness and weary
disappointment; yet a brave man still, with some hope nobly burning in
the true hero's heart of him; but with less vitality than hope, so that
he could do no more than write his big book of travel, and then lie down
to die.

Many loose statements have been written about the use which the French
made of Flinders' charts while he was held in captivity. It has been too
often taken for granted that the evidence of plagiarism is beyond
dispute. Not only popular writers, but historians with claims to be
considered scientific, are substantially in agreement on this point. Two
examples will indicate what is meant. Messrs. Becke and Jeffery, in their
Naval Pioneers of Australia (page 216), assert that "among other
indignities he suffered, he found that the charts taken from him by
Decaen had been appropriated to Baudin's exploring expedition." Again, to
take a work appealing to a different section of readers, the Cambridge
Modern History also charges the French with "the use of his papers to
appropriate for their ships the credit of his discoveries."* (* Volume 9
page 739 (Professor Egerton). Two more examples may be cited. Thus,
Laurie, Story of Australasia (1896) page 86. "He found that his journals
and charts had been stolen by the French governor of the Mauritius and
transferred to Paris, where the fullest advantage was taken of them by M.
Peron." Again, Jose, Australasia (1901) page 21: "His maps were taken to
France to be published there with French names as the work of French
explorers.")

The charge is, it will be observed, that not only did the French governor
of Mauritius imprison the English navigator despite his passport,
detaining him years after the other members of the Cumberland's company
had been liberated, but that Flinders' charts and papers were improperly
used in the preparation of the history of Baudin's expedition. Indeed,
the accusation is equivalent to one of garrotting: that General Decaen
seized and bound his victim, robbed him, and enabled Freycinet and Peron
to use his work as their own.

So widely has this view been diffused, that probably few will be prepared
for the assurance that there is no evidence to support it. On the
contrary, as will be shown, neither Peron nor Freycinet ever saw any
chart or journal taken from Flinders. Use was made, it is believed, of
one British chart which may possibly have been his--that embodying a
drawing of Port Phillip--but reasons will be given for the opinion that
this, whether it was Flinders' chart or Murray's, was seen by the French
before Baudin's ships left Sydney, and was certainly not copied at
Mauritius.

Before proving these statements, it will be convenient to make the reader
acquainted with the Captain-General or Military-Governor of Mauritius,
Charles Decaen. He was a rough, dogged, somewhat brutal type of soldier,
who had attained to eminence during the revolutionary wars. Born at Caen
in Normandy in 1769, he served during his youth for three years in the
artillery, and then entered a lawyer's office in his native town; but
during the wars of the Revolution, when France was pressed by enemies on
all sides, he threw aside quills and parchments, and, in his twenty-third
year, entered upon his strenuous fighting career. Thenceforth, until
after the signing of the Treaty of Luneville in 1801, he was almost
constantly engaged in military operations. He had risen from the ranks,
and won commendation for stubborn valour from such commanders as Desaix,
Kleber, Hoche, Westermann, and Moreau. He participated in the cruel war
of La Vendee, won fresh laurels during the campaign of the Rhine (1796),
and fought with a furious lust for battle under the noble Moreau at
Hohenlinden. By that time (1800) he had become a general of division, and
on the eve of the battle, when he brought up his force and made his
appearance at a council of war, Moreau greeted him with the flattering
remark, "Ah! here is Decaen; the battle will be ours to-morrow." He was
recognised as a strong-willed general, not brilliant, but very
determined, and as also a thoroughly capable and honest administrator.
Napoleon, in 1803, selected him for Indian service, and stationed him at
the Isle of France (Mauritius), in the hope that if all went well a heavy
blow might some day be struck at British power in India. Decaen was not a
courtier, nor a scholar, nor a man of sentiment, but a plain, coarse,
downright soldier; a true Norman, and a thorough son of the Revolution.
He was not the kind of man to be interested in navigation, discovery, or
the expansion of human knowledge; and appeals made to him on these
grounds on behalf of Flinders were futile. Yet we must do justice to the
admirable side of Decaen's character, by observing that he bore a
reputation for generosity among his fellow-soldiers; and he was a very
efficient and economical governor, maintaining a reputation for probity
that did not distinguish too many of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic
generals. Flinders, just in his opinion even of an enemy, wrote to Sir
Joseph Banks that Decaen bore among the people of the island "the
character of having a good heart, though too hasty and violent." It is
pleasant to find him writing thus of the man who had wronged him, at a
time when he had good reason for feeling bitter; and we certainly need
not think worse of Decaen than did the man who suffered most from the
general's callous insensibility.

Now, the clear facts with regard to the taking from Flinders of his
charts, papers, log-books, and journals are these. On December 17, the
day after his arrival at the island, it was signified to him that the
governor intended to detain him. All his charts and journals relating to
the voyage, and the letters and official packets which he was carrying to
England from Sydney, were put in a trunk, which was sealed by Flinders at
the desire of the French officers who were sent by Decaen to arrest him.
He signed a paper certifying that all the "charts, journals, and papers
of the voyage" had been thus placed in the trunk.* (* Flinders, Voyage 2
361.) On the following day (Sunday, December 18) he was informed that the
governor wished to have extracts made from his journals, showing the
causes which had compelled him to quit the Investigator, for which ship
and for no other, according to Decaen's contention, the passport had been
granted. He also wished to elicit from the journals evidence of the
reasons which had induced Flinders to stop at Mauritius, instead of
sailing for the Cape of Good Hope. The officers explained that General
Decaen considered it to be necessary to have these extracts for
transmission to the French Government, "to justify himself for granting
that assistance to the Cumberland which had been ordered for the
Investigator." So far he had not, as a fact, granted any assistance to
the Cumberland; for the imprisonment of her commander and crew can hardly
be called "assistance." But as Flinders was convinced that an examination
of his latest log-book would manifest his bona fides, and assure both the
governor and the French Government that he was no spy, as Decaen accused
him of being, he broke the seal of the trunk, and took out "the third
volume of my rough log-book, which contained the whole of what they
desired to know, and pointing out the parts in question to the secretary,
told him to make such extracts as should be thought requisite."* (*
Flinders, Voyage 2 364.) All the other papers and books were at once
returned to the trunk, and sealed as before.

The third log-book was the only document pertaining to Flinders'
discoveries which Decaen ever had in his possession. It was never
returned. The rightful owner never saw it again. It has never since been
produced. Flinders applied for it repeatedly. On the very day before he
was liberated, he made a final demand for it. Mr. Hope, the British
commissary for the exchange of prisoners, made a formal official
application for it in 1810, but met with "a positive refusal both of the
book and of permission to take a copy of it."* (* Hope's report to the
Admiralty, October 25, 1810 (Historical Records of New South Wales 7
435).) In 1811, after Flinders reached England, the Admiralty, at his
instance, requested the French Government to insist upon its restoration.
At the end of his book, published 1814, Flinders earnestly protested
against Decaen's continued detention of it. But it was not restored.

This book contained Flinders' "Journal of transactions and observations
on board the Investigator, the Porpoise, the Hope cutter, and Cumberland
schooner," for the preceding six months.* (* Flinders, Voyage 2 378 and
463.) There was therefore nothing in it which could have been of any use
in relation to the so-called Terre Napoleon. The log-book embodying
Flinders' observations on those coasts pertained to a period before the
six months just mentioned, and was never seen by Decaen, nor did he see
any of Flinders' charts whatever.

Towards the end of December the whole of the remaining books and papers
of Flinders, even including his family letters, were, in his presence,
collected from the ship by M. Bonnefoy, an interpreter, and Colonel
Monistrol, Decaen's secretary--who "acted throughout with much
politeness, apologising for what they were obliged by their orders to
execute"--and sealed up in another trunk.* (* Ibid 2 367.) Later in the
same month (December 26), Flinders, wishing to occupy his time in
confinement by proceeding with his work, wrote to the governor,
requesting that he might have his printed volumes, and two or three
charts and manuscript books, for the purpose of finishing his chart of
the Gulf of Carpentaria, adding in explanation that some of his papers
were lost in the wreck of the Porpoise, and he wished to finish the work
from memory, with the aid of the remaining materials, before the details
faded from his recollection. Decaen acceded to his request, and Flinders
took out two log-books, such charts as were necessary, all his private
letters, and his journals of bearings and astronomical observations. He
also took out his naval signal-book, which he destroyed, lest it should
be seen by any French officer. He gave a receipt for the documents, and
the remainder were once more locked up in the trunk, which was again
sealed by Flinders.* (* Voyage 2 378.) The papers so obtained were the
"greatest part"* (* Flinders, letter to Governor King, August 1804, and
letter to Banks, July 12. Historical Records of New South Wales 4 411 and
396.) of his books and charts, and the possession of them, enabling
Flinders to devote his energies to the work he loved, relieved the
depression which imprisonment and illness cast upon his active brain and
body.

In February of the following year Flinders made another application for
more books and papers, consisting of the greater part of his "original
fair charts,"* (* Voyage 2 384.) for the purpose of making an abridgment
of his discoveries upon a single sheet. The governor was by this time
very angry with his captive; the more so, probably, as he was conscious
of the inadequacy of the reasons for detaining him. But the demeanour of
the English captain did not please him either. Flinders, maintaining the
dignity of his uniform, had not assumed a humble mien, and had even
refused an invitation to dine with the general unless he could attend,
not as a prisoner, but as an officer free and unsuspect. If Decaen really
believed him to be a spy, why did he invite him? The governor, however,
was not now in a mood to oblige his prisoner, and in response to his
application for more papers, curtly replied that he would attend to the
request when freed from more pressing business. Flinders in March urged
Colonel Monistrol to intercede; complained in May that the manuscripts
were still withheld; and, being unable to make any impression on the
obdurate Decaen, completed his map with the aid of another journal kept
by Mr. Akin, the master of the Investigator, who was a fellow-prisoner
until May 1805.

These remaining documents were not restored till August 1807, when
Flinders was invited to go to Port Louis from the house in the country
where part of his imprisonment was spent, and take possession of the
trunk. He found that rats had eaten their way into it, and had made great
havoc among his papers, totally destroying some. But the seals were
unbroken, and Flinders gave a receipt for the contents, acknowledging
that the most important documents had happily escaped the rats.* (*
Voyage 2 462.) He was an observant man, and if he had had any suspicion
that the charts had been tampered with, would have promptly said so.
There is not, however, the faintest reason for believing that the trunk
had been opened between December 1803, when Flinders was permitted to
take out the "greatest part" of his important papers, and August 1807,
when the remainder were restored to him. The only missing documents were
the few which the rats had eaten, the third log-book, which Decaen
refused to give up, and two packets of official despatches which the
Cumberland was carrying from Sydney to England, and which Colonel
Monistrol informed him had been "long ago disposed of." The Colonel
"supposed that something in them had contributed to my imprisonment."
They had been "disposed of" by being sent to Paris for the perusal of
Napoleon's Government.

Why, however, did Decaen refuse permission to Flinders to have the last
of his papers till the year 1807? Why had he willingly permitted him to
take some of them in December 1803, but declined to let him have any more
till nearly four years later? A comparison of dates is instructive on
this point. As has already been said, the first volume of Peron's Voyage
de Decouvertes aux Terres Australes, and the first edition of the atlas
containing two of Freycinet's charts, were published in 1807. Making all
allowances for the obstinate character of Decaen, it is most significant
that the remainder of Flinders' charts and papers were kept from him
until the very time when Freycinet was ready to publish the first and
hurried edition of his atlas. It is impossible to resist the conclusion
that the governor was acting under influences exerted from Paris, private
if not official, in refusing the navigator access to the material which
it was believed was essential to the completion of the charts that would
demonstrate his discoveries, until the French officer could hurry out a
makeshift atlas and fictitious claims could be based upon it.

This conduct was reprehensible enough, but, it must be insisted, there is
no ground whatever for the too frequently made assertion that Flinders'
charts were surreptitiously copied or actually stolen--for the loose
manner in which the affair has been related in some books renders
doubtful which of the two accusations the authors desired to make.* (*
Blair, Cyclopaedia of Australasia page 131, actually says that Baudin,
"having taken copies of Flinders' charts, sailed for France, where he
published a book and received great applause from the French nation, who
called him the greatest discoverer of the present century."
Spirit-writing one has heard of, but not even the Psychical Research
Society has recorded the case of a dead man copying hydrographical
charts. A similar disregard of the fact that Baudin died before the
return of his ships occurs in J.E. Tenison Woods' History of Exploration
in Australia (1865) volume 1 page 174, where we are informed that
Flinders was detained in Mauritius, because "at that time the Emperor
Napoleon was obliging Admiral Baudin [sic] to usurp the glory of his
discoveries"; a case of post-mortem promotion.) Not only is there no
evidence to support any such charge, but Flinders himself never accused
Decaen of making an improper use of the papers in the trunk, nor did he
ever allege that the two charts contained in the French atlas of 1807, or
those in Freycinet's folio atlas of 1812--which he probably saw before
his death in July 1814--were founded upon or owed anything to his
drawings. He simply set forth the facts with his habitual exactness and
fairness; and where Flinders was just, there is surely no warrant for
others to perpetuate an accusation which originated in a period of
intense national hatred and jealousy, and bears its birth-mark upon it.

A critical examination of Freycinet's charts is alone sufficient to
shatter the opinion that he utilised the drawings of the English
navigator. Had he even seen them, his own work would have been more
accurate than it was, and his large chart of New Holland would have been
more complete. It has already been shown that the French chart of the
so-called Terre Napoleon coasts was in large measure defective, many
capes, islands, and bays being represented that have no existence in
fact, and a large portion of the outline being crudely and erroneously
drawn. Not only so, but if Freycinet had had copies of Flinders' charts
before him, use would certainly have been made of them to give greater
completeness to the eastern and north-western shores. Flinders, in his
last voyage in the Investigator, had made important discoveries on the
Queensland coast and in the Gulf of Carpentaria. He had discovered, for
instance, Port Bowen and Port Curtis, which had been missed by Cook, had
given greater definiteness to the islands near the southern end of the
Great Barrier Reef, and had made a dangerous acquaintance with the Reef
itself, discovering one narrow alley through it which is marked on modern
maps as Flinders' Passage. In the Gulf of Carpentaria he had also done
some entirely original work. He had shown, for example, that Cape Van
Diemen, represented as a projection from the mainland on all previous
maps, was really part of an island, which he named Mornington Isle.
Freycinet's charts reveal not the faintest trace of the fresh discoveries
which Flinders had achieved around east and north-east Australia, nor do
they in any particular indicate that their manifold serious imperfections
had been corrected by reference to Flinders' superb charts. In short, the
French work, though beautifully engraved and printed, was, in a
geographical sense, for the most part too poor to justify the suspicion
that Freycinet received aid from the drawings of the persevering captain
of the Investigator.

The circumstances attending the imprisonment of Flinders, and the
precipitate haste with which Freycinet's work was pushed forward,
undoubtedly furnished prima facie justification for the suspicion,
indignantly voiced by contemporary English writers, and which has been
hardened into a direct accusation since, that an act of plagiarism was
committed, dishonest in itself, and doubly guilty from the circumstances
in which it was performed. The Quarterly reviewer of 1817* pointed out
that the few charts in Freycinet's atlas "ARE VERY LIKE THOSE OF CAPTAIN
FLINDERS, ONLY MUCH INFERIOR IN POINT OF EXECUTION." (* Volume 17 pages
229 to 230; the italics are the reviewer's. The plagiarism legend--for
such it is--originated with this Quarterly article. The earliest
biographer of Flinders, in the Naval Chronicle 32 page 177, wrote very
strongly of General Decaen, considering that he was "worthy of his
Corsican master," and that his name "will be consigned to infamy as long
as mankind shall consider it honourable to promote science and civilised
to practise hospitality," but alleged no improper use of the charts. C.A.
Walckenaer, who wrote the excellent life of Flinders in the Biographie
Universelle, published in 1856, said that the French Government was
"inexcusable d'avoir retenu Flinders en captivite," but denied that his
charts were improperly used, and promised that when he came to write the
life of Peron in a succeeding volume, he would by an analysis of the
evidence refute the story. But Walckenaer died in 1852, before his
Flinders article was published, and the author of the article on Peron
did not carry out his predecessor's undertaking. It is to be presumed
that Walckenaer would have exhibited the facts set out above. Alfred de
Lacaze, in his article on Flinders in the Nouvelle Biographie Generale 17
932, wrote that the excuses given for the imprisonment of Flinders formed
"pauvres pretextes"; but declared that the seals put on Flinders' papers
in Mauritius were "loyalement respecte pendant les six ans que dura la
captivite du navigateur anglais." That was true. It is a pleasure to
acknowledge that all the references to Flinders which the author has seen
in French works unanimously and strongly condemn the treatment of him,
and do ample justice to his splendid qualities.) They are very like in
one respect, namely, in the representation of Spencer's and St. Vincent's
Gulfs and Kangaroo Island. In other particulars, at all events as far as
relates to the Terre Napoleon coasts, the French charts are quite unlike
those of Flinders. But contemporaries--knowing that Flinders' charts had
been taken from him by Decaen, and that he had been held in captivity
until the French could finish their work, and then, comparing his charts
with Freycinet's, finding that parts of the coasts discovered by the
English captain were well represented on the French charts, while other
parts of the outline of Terra Australis were badly done or
inadequate--not unnaturally drew the inference that the well-drawn
sections were based upon drawings improperly acquired. If the chain of
evidence was not complete, the violent racial animosities then prevalent
moulded the missing links in the fervent heat of imagination.

But it is quite easy to account for the superior cartography of the two
gulfs and Kangaroo Island. Le Geographe visited this region twice. In
April 1802, after meeting Flinders in Encounter Bay, Baudin sailed west,
and endeavoured to penetrate the two gulfs. But his corvette drew too
much water to permit him to go far, and he determined to give up the
attempt, and to devote "une seconde campagne" to "la reconnaissance
complete de ces deux grands enfoncements."* (* Voyage de Decouvertes 3
11.) In Sydney, Governor King permitted him to purchase a small locally
constructed vessel of light draught--called the Casuarina, because she
was built of she-oak--with which to explore rivers and shallow waters.
The command of this boat was entrusted to Lieutenant Louis de Freycinet,
the future cartographer and part historian of the expedition; and the
charts of the two gulfs and Kangaroo Island were made by, or under the
superintendence of, that officer. Freycinet was not with Le Geographe on
her first cruise in these waters, and was not responsible for the
original drawings upon which his charts of the Terre Napoleon coasts
eastward of Cape Jervis were founded. But the fact that he surveyed the
gulfs and Kangaroo Island on the second visit, in 1803, is quite
sufficient to account for the improved cartography of this region in the
French atlas. Whatever we may think of the part played by Freycinet in
relation to Flinders and the history of the expedition, his professional
ability was of a high character. All the charting work done by him, when
he had not to depend upon the rough drawings of inferior men, was very
good. His interest in scientific navigation was deep, and when, in 1817,
he was given the command of a fresh French expedition, consisting of the
Uranie and the Physicienne, the large folio atlas produced by him
indicated that he had studied the technicalities of his profession to
excellent purpose.

The superiority of the work done by Baudin's expedition in the vicinity
of the two gulfs, then, was not due to any fraudulent use of Flinders'
material, but simply to the fact that there was a competent officer in
charge of it at that time; and there is nothing on the charts for which
Freycinet was personally responsible to justify the belief that his work
claiming to be original was not genuinely his own. When, in 1824, he
published a second edition of the Voyage de Decouvertes aux Terres
Australes,* (* In octavo volumes; the first edition was in quarto.) he
repudiated with quiet dignity the suggestion that the work of the English
navigator had been plagiarised.* (* "C'est assez," he wrote, "repousser
des accusations odieuses et envenimees, fondees sur des idees
chimeriques, avec absence de toute espece de preuve. Le temps, qui calme
les passions humaines et permet toujours a la verite de reprendre ses
droits, fera justice d'accusations concues avec legerete et soutenues
avec inconvenance. Peron et Flinders sont morts; l'un et l'autre ont des
titres certains a notre estime, a notre admiration; ils vivront, ainsi
que leurs travaux, dans la memoire des hommes, et les nuages que je
cherche a dissiper auront disparu sans retour" (volume 1 Preface page
11). One cannot but be touched by that appeal; but at the same time it is
to be observed that in the very preface in which he made it, Freycinet
did far less than justice to the work of Flinders.) Except for the Port
Phillip part of the work, we might fairly say that history has commonly
done him and his confreres a serious injustice.

But we have seen that, although Port Phillip was included in the French
charts, and inside soundings were actually shown, neither the port nor
the entrance was seen by the expedition. How was that information
obtained?

Le Geographe and Le Naturaliste lay in Sydney harbour from June 20 to
November 18, 1802, their afflicted crews receiving medical treatment, and
their officers enjoying the hospitality of Governor King. Flinders and
Lieutenant John Murray, who discovered Port Phillip, were both there
during part of the same time. It was then that the French learnt of the
existence of the great harbour of which Baudin was ignorant when he met
Flinders in Encounter Bay; and it is highly probable that by some means
they obtained a copy of the chart which they saw.

Grounds for stating that that is a probability will be advanced a little
later. But let us first see how the drawing of Port Phillip that does
appear on the Terre Napoleon charts got there.

It was taken, as Freycinet acknowledged,* (* Voyage de Decouvertes 3
430.) "from a manuscript chart prepared on the English ship Armiston, in
1804. In 1806 the French frigate La Piedmontoise captured the British
ship Fame. Amongst the papers found on board was this manuscript chart.
It so happened that one of the officers of La Piedmontoise was Lieutenant
Charles Baudin des Ardennes, who had been a junior officer on Le
Naturaliste from 1800 to 1804. (He was no relative of Captain Baudin. The
family of Baudin des Ardennes was very well known in France; and this
officer became a distinguished French admiral.) He took possession of the
manuscript, and handed it over to Freycinet, who made use of it in
preparing his charts.

Probably it was a very rough chart; but even so, if Freycinet had had
anything like a drawing of Port Phillip made on Le Geographe, he would
have turned out a better piece of work. Not only is the outline very
defective, but the "lay" of the Nepean peninsula is so grossly wrong that
this alone would suffice to show that Freycinet did not merely correct
his chart with the aid of that captured from the Fame, but that the whole
drawing of Port Phillip was fitted in, like a patch. However ill a
navigator may draw, he always knows whether a coast along which he is
sailing runs west or north-west. A mariner's apprentice would know that.
But on the Terre Napoleon charts, the peninsula lies due east and west,
whereas in reality, as the reader will see by reference to any good map,
it has a decidedly north-westerly inclination. The patch was not well put
on. The consequence of this bad cobbling was to give a box-like,
rectangular appearance to the bay, utterly unlike the reality. The east
and west sides were carried about as far as Mornington and St. Leonards
respectively, in two nearly straight and parallel lines; Swan Bay and
Swan Island were missed altogether; and the graceful curve of the coast
round by Sorrento and Dromana--a curve most grateful to the eye on a day
when sea and sky are blue, and the silver sands and white cliffs shine in
the clear light--was tortured into a sharp bend. It was a very rough bit
of work.

The fact that an expedition sent out for discovery purposes, and which
named a considerable extent of the coast-line traversed after the Emperor
who had enabled it to be despatched, had to depend upon a manuscript
accidentally obtained from a captured British merchant ship for a chart
of the principal port in the territory so flauntingly denominated, hardly
calls for comment. But even when we are in possession of this
information, we are still left in some doubt as to whether the French had
not some sort of a drawing of Port Phillip before they left Sydney.
Otherwise the course pursued by their commodore after quitting that port
is quite unaccountable. The following reasons induce that belief.

When Baudin bade an affectionate and grateful farewell to Governor King
at Sydney on November 18, he sailed direct to King Island, which is
situated in Bass Strait, on the 40th parallel of south latitude, about
midway between the south-east of Cape Otway and the north-west corner of
Tasmania. Le Geographe was accompanied by Le Naturaliste and the little
Casuarina. A camp was established on the island, which was fully charted.
Baudin had missed it on his former voyage, though he had sailed within a
few miles of it. It will be remembered that when Flinders conversed with
him in Encounter Bay, and "inquired concerning a large island said to lie
in the western entrance of Bass Strait," Baudin said he had not seen it,
"and seemed to doubt much of its existence."* (*Flinders, Voyage 1 188.)
But Flinders found it easily enough, and spent a little time there before
entering Port Phillip. It was doubtless this inquiry of Flinders that
induced Baudin to mark down on his chart a purely fictitious island far
westward of the actual one, and to inscribe against it the words, "it is
believed that an island exists in this latitude."* (* "On croit qu'il
existe une ile par cette latitude." See the chart, a little west of Cape
Bridgewater (Cap Duquesne).)

As Baudin afterwards found the real island, it is curious that the
imaginary one should have been kept upon his chart; but there is a reason
for that also. While the French lay at King Island, most of the work done
up to date--geographical, zoological, and other--was collected and sent
back to France on Le Naturaliste; Le Geographe and the Casuarina
remaining to finish the exploratory voyage. Le Naturaliste sailed for
Europe on December 16, and entered the port of Havre on June 6, 1803. Had
Baudin lived to return to France, and to supervise the completion of the
charts, it is most probable that he would have erased the island which
was merely supposed, as he had since charted the real one; but Freycinet,
not having been present at the meeting with Flinders, and knowing nothing
of the reason which induced Baudin to set it down, left it there--a
quaint little fragment of corroboration of the truth of Flinders'
narrative of the Encounter Bay incident.

Now, when at the end of December Le Geographe and the Casuarina sailed
from King Island--the naturalists having in the interval profitably
enjoyed themselves in collecting plants, insects, and marine
specimens--they made direct for Kangaroo Island, four hundred miles away,
to resume the work which had been commenced in the gulfs in the previous
April and May. The whole of the movements of the ships up to this time
are to be read in the printed logs appended to volume 3 of the Voyage de
Decouvertes. Baudin made no call at Port Phillip, nor did one of his
three vessels visit the harbour either before or after reaching King
Island. But by this time Baudin knew all about the port, and it is surely
difficult to suppose that he would have sailed straight past it in
December unless at length he had it marked on his rough charts. His
officers knew about it too, though none of them had seen it; for Captain
Hamelin of Le Naturaliste reported when he reached Paris, that, as he
left King Island, he met and spoke to "an English goelette on her way to
Port Philips [sic], south-east coast."* (* Moniteur, 27 Thermidor.) It
was the Cumberland, Lieutenant Charles Robbins, bound on a mission to be
explained later.

It seems reasonable to assume that when Le Naturaliste sailed for France
on December 16, and the two other ships for Kangaroo Island later in the
same month, Baudin was quite satisfied that he had in his possession as
complete a representation of the whole of the Terre Napoleon coasts
westward to the gulfs, as would justify him in resuming the work from
that situation. Clearly, then, he obtained a Port Phillip drawing of some
kind before he left Sydney.

From what source could Baudin have obtained such a chart, however rough
and partial?

Up to the time when he lay at Port Jackson, only two ships had ever
entered Port Phillip. These were the Lady Nelson, under Murray's command,
in February 1802--the harbour having been discovered in the previous
month--and the Investigator, under Flinders, in April and May. No other
keels had, from the moment of the discovery until Baudin's vessels
finally left these coasts, breasted the broad expanse of waters at the
head of which the great city of Melbourne now stands. The next ship to
pass the heads was the Cumberland, which, early in 1803, entered with
Surveyor Grimes on board, to make the first complete survey of the port.
But by that time Baudin was far away. From one or other of the two
available sources, therefore, Baudin must have obtained a drawing,
assuming that he did obtain one in Sydney; and if he did not, his sailing
past the port, when he had an opportunity of entering it in December, was
surely as extraordinary a piece of wilful negligence as is to be found in
the annals of exploration.

It is possible that Baudin or one of his officers saw some drawing made
on the Lady Nelson. If they saw one made by Murray himself, it is not
likely to have been a very good one. Murray was not a skilled
cartographer. Governor King, who liked him, and wished to secure
promotion for him, had to confess in writing to the Duke of Portland,
that he did not "possess the qualities of an astronomer and surveyor,"
which was putting the matter in a very friendly fashion. If a chart or
crude drawing by Murray had been obtained, Freycinet might still be glad
to get the Fame chart which he used.

Both in his book and his correspondence Flinders mentions having shown
charts to Baudin; and though the French commodore did not reciprocate by
showing any of his work to Flinders, we may fairly regard that as due to
reluctance to challenge comparisons. Flinders was without a rival in his
generation for the beauty, completeness, and accuracy of his
hydrographical work, and Captain Baudin's excuses probably sprang from
pride. The reason he gave was that his charts were to be finished in
Paris. But there was nothing to prevent his showing the preliminary
drawings to Flinders, and as a fact he had shown them to King. If
Flinders had had a sight of them he would have detected at a glance the
absence of any indication of Port Phillip. But we learn from the Moniteur
of 27 Thermidor, Revolutionary Year 11 (August 15, 1803), which published
a progress report of the expedition, that the charts sent home by Baudin
were very rough. Part of the coast was described as being "figuree assez
grossierement et sans details."

Flinders, it should be explained, did not publish the chart which he made
when he entered Port Phillip with the Investigator, because by the time
when he was preparing his work for publication, a copy of the complete
survey chart made by Grimes had been supplied to him by the Admiralty. He
used Grimes's drawing in preference to his own--acknowledging the
authorship, of course--because when he found Port Phillip he was not in a
position to examine it thoroughly. His supplies, after his long voyage,
had become depleted, and he could not delay.

It is most likely that the French learnt of the existence of Port Phillip
from Flinders, though not at all likely that they were able to obtain a
copy of his drawing. If Baudin got one at all, it must have been
Murray's.

Freycinet did not acknowledge on any of his charts the source whence he
obtained his Port Phillip drawing. Obviously, it would have been honest
to do so. All he did was to insert two lines at the bottom of the page in
that part of volume 3 dealing with navigation details, where very few
readers would observe the reference.

There rema

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