Chapter 4 No.4

Imprisonment of Flinders in Mauritius.

The French atlas of 1807.

The French charts and the names upon them.

Hurried publication.

The allegation that Péron 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.

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.

MAP OF TERRE NAPOLéON

From Freycinet's Atlas, 1808.

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 Péron. 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. Péron 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 Péron 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 Péron, suggesting that he had acted under pressure. "How, then, came M. Péron 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 Péron'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 Péron 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 Péron. 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 Péron 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, Péron 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 Péron 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, Péron, 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 Péron 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, Péron 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. Péron 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 Péron. 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." Péron'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, Péron 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. Péron 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.)

FRENCHMAN'S ROCK, KANGAROO ISLAND

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.