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 c.u.mberland, Lieutenant Charles Robbins, bound on a mission to be explained later.
It seems reasonable to a.s.sume 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 pa.s.s the heads was the c.u.mberland, 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, a.s.suming 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 a.s.sez 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 remains the question: Why did General Decaen keep Flinders" third log-book when restoring to him all his other papers? The reason suggested by Flinders himself is probably the right one: that the governor retained it in order that he might be better able to justify himself to Napoleon in case he was blamed for disregarding the pa.s.sport. He "did not choose to have his accusations disproved by the production either of the original or of an authenticated copy." It is difficult to see what other motive Decaen can have had. The sheer cantankerous desire to annoy and injure a man who had angered him can hardly have been so strong within him as even to cause a disregard of the common proprietary rights of his prisoner. The book could have been of no use to Decaen for any other purpose. Its contents had no bearing on the Terre Napoleon coasts, as they related to a period subsequent to Flinders" voyage there. Doubtless the book showed why the c.u.mberland called at Mauritius, but the reason for that was palpable. The idea that a leaky twenty-nine ton schooner, with her pumps out of gear, could have put into Port Louis with any aggressive intent against the great French nation, which had a powerful squadron under Admiral Linois in the Indian Ocean, was too absurd for consideration. But Decaen was plainly hunting for reasons for detaining Flinders, and it is possible that he found a shred of justification in the despatches which the c.u.mberland was carrying from Governor King to the British Government; though the protracted character of the imprisonment, after every other member of the ship"s company had been set free, cannot have been due to that motive.
It is most probable that representations made to Decaen by Peron, before Le Geographe sailed, had an effect upon the mind of the governor which induced him to regard any ship flying the British flag as an enemy to French policy. Peron, from what he had seen of the growth of Port Jackson, and from the prompt audacity and pugnacious a.s.sertiveness of an incident which occurred at King Island--to be described in the ninth chapter--had conceived an inflated idea of the enormity of British pretensions in the southern hemisphere. He was convinced that, using the Sydney settlement as a base of operations, the British intended to dominate the whole Pacific Ocean, even to the degree of menacing the Spanish colonies of South America. On 20th Frimaire, Revolutionary Year 12 (December 11, 1803), four days before Le Geographe sailed from the island, Peron set his views on paper in a report to Decaen, stating that his interviews with officers, magistrates, clergymen, and other cla.s.ses of people in Sydney, had convinced him that his antic.i.p.ations were well founded. He pointed out that already the English were extending their operations to the Sandwich, Friendly, Society, Navigator, and other islands of the South Pacific; that at Norfolk Island they had a colony of between fifteen hundred and sixteen hundred people, and found its timber to be of great value for shipbuilding; and that gradually the British Government, by extending their military posts and trading stations across the ocean, would sooner or later establish themselves within striking distance of Chili and Peru.* (* Peron"s report to General Decaen is given in M. Henri Prentout"s valuable treatise, L"Ile de France sous Decaen, 1803 to 1810; essai sur la politique coloniale du premier empire, Paris 1901 page 380. M. Prentout"s book is extremely fair, and, based as it is mainly upon the voluminous papers of General Decaen, preserved in his native town of Caen, is authoritative.) Peron pointed to the political insecurity of the Spanish-American colonies, and predicted that the outbreak of revolution in them, possibly with the connivance of the English, would further the deep designs of that absorbent and dominating nation.* (* A French author of later date, Prevost-Paradol (La France Nouvelle, published in 1868), predicted that some day "a new Monroe doctrine would forbid old Europe, in the name of the United States of Australia, to put foot upon an isle of the Pacific.")
Decaen was pondering over Peron"s inflammatory memorandum when the lame little c.u.mberland staggered into Port Louis. Here, a victim ready to hand, was one of the instruments of the extension of British dominion, the foremost explorer in the service of the British Crown. True, Flinders had a pa.s.sport from the French Government, but it was made out, not for the c.u.mberland but for the Investigator. To take advantage of such a point, when the Investigator had had to be abandoned as unseaworthy, was manifestly to seize the flimsiest pretext for imprisoning the man whom the winds and waves had brought within his power.* (* "C"etait une chicane," says M. Henri Prentout, page 382.) But Decaen was in the temper for regarding the English navigator as a spy, and he imprisoned him first and looked for evidence to justify himself afterwards. He had just read Peron"s report; and "it was not unnatural," says a learned French historian somewhat naively, "that the Captain-General should attribute to the English savant the intention of playing at Port Louis the role that our naturalist had played at Port Jackson."* (* Ibid.) The imputation is unjust to Peron, who had not "spied" in Port Jackson, because the English there had manifested no disposition to conceal. Nothing that he reported was what the Government had wished him not to see; they had helped him to see all that he desired; and his preposterous political inferences, though devoid of foundation, hardly amounted to a positive breach of hospitality. Besides, had Decaen feared that the release of Flinders would be dangerous because he might report the weak state of the defences of the island, the same would have applied to the liberation of the junior officers and men of the c.u.mberland. They, however, were permitted to return to England after a brief period of detention.
Decaen also alleged that Flinders was personally rude to him in presenting himself before him "le chapeau sur la tete." Flinders was undoubtedly smarting under a sense of wrong at the time, but discourtesy was by no means a feature of his character; and to imprison a man for six and a half years for not taking his hat off would have been queer conduct from a son of the Revolution!
But Decaen"s reasons for his treatment of his captive were not consistent with themselves. He gave quite another set in a report to his Government, alleging that the detention of Flinders was justified as a measure of reprisals on account of the action of the English at Pondicherry and the Cape; and, entirely in the manner of a man looking for a shred of justification for doing the unjustifiable, he alleged that vigorous aggressive action on his part was necessary, because it was evident to him that the English meant to absorb the whole commerce of the Indian Ocean, the Pacific, and the China Sea, basing his statements on the report of Peron, of which he sent a copy to Paris. Not only did he represent that the British intended to annihilate French power in India, and supplant Spanish authority in South America, but he regarded their repeated visits to Timor, their action in regard to Java in 1798, and their establishment at Penang, off the Malay Peninsula, as clear evidence that the "greedy and devouring jaws" of the English lion were ready to swallow the Dutch East Indies likewise. How these nefarious designs afforded a reason for imprisoning Matthew Flinders is not apparent; but Decaen was pleading for the despatch of troops to enable him to make an effective attack upon the English in India,* (* Prentout, page 383.) and he seemed to suppose that the holding up of the explorer would give satisfaction in Paris, and further the accomplishment of his plans.
In October 1810, only three months after the liberation of Flinders, the Isle of France was closely blockaded by a British squadron under Vice-Admiral Bertie. In December, General Decaen agreed to capitulate, and Major-General Abercromby took possession of the island, which has ever since been a British dependency. It is unfortunate that the British officers did not at this time remember that Decaen had kept Flinders"
third log-book. He had written to Vice-Admiral Bertie from the Cape of Good Hope, in July 1810, requesting that "if any occurrences should put General Decaen within his power," he would demand the volume from him.
But the request was overlooked, "in the tumult of events," when the capitulation took place.* (* Flinders, letter to the Admiralty, in Historical Records of New South Wales 7 529.) It is, however, significant of the honour in which naval men held the intrepid navigator, that after the capitulation the British officers refused to dine with Decaen, on account of his treatment of Flinders.* (* Souvenirs d"un vieux colon, quoted by Prentout, page 660.) It was not the first time that gentlemen wearing the naval uniform of England had refused to eat at his table.
On January 6, 1811, a French schooner was captured bearing despatches from France. Amongst them was a despatch informing Decaen that Napoleon had superseded him in the governorship.* (* Naval Chronicle volume 25 337.) Before he could obey the summons to France, the British had captured the island and sent him home. It is scarcely likely that the Emperor"s order of recall was due to disapproval of Decaen"s conduct in continuing Flinders" imprisonment after the French Government had ordered his release, although there is in existence a decree signed by Napoleon, dated March 11, 1806, "authorising the Minister of Marine to restore his ship to Captain Flinders of the English schooner c.u.mberland."* (* The doc.u.ment is in the Archives Nationales, Paris (AP. 4 pl. 1260, n. 47).
The author is indebted for this fact to Dr. Charles Schmidt, the archivist at the Archives Nationales, through the courtesy of Mr. F.M.
Bladen, of the Public Library, Sydney. Dr. Schmidt has also supplied the information that this is "the only doc.u.ment concerning Captain Flinders in our possession." "Concerning the voyages of Peron and Freycinet, I have found nothing in the Archives," he adds.) As Flinders was not released till July 1810, Decaen certainly did disregard the Emperor"s command for three years--from July 1807, when the decree was received by him, though it is to be remembered that he restored the trunk of papers in the very next month (August). But Napoleon had signified to Decaen"s aide-de-camp, Barois--who was sent to France in 1804 with special instructions to mention the Flinders affair to the Emperor--that he approved of what the general had done;* (* Prentout, page 393. "Napoleon parut approuver les raisons que Barois invoquait pour justifier la conduite de Decaen.") and Napoleon was scarcely likely to be gravely concerned about the calamities of an English sea captain at that particular time. It is true that between 1804 and the release, Sir Joseph Banks and other influential men in the world of learning had been active in urging the liberation of the navigator. The venerable Bougainville was one of these. It is also true that Napoleon prided himself on his interest in scientific work. But Decaen had been a good servant, placed in a difficult situation, where there was much responsibility and little glory to be won; and even if the Emperor had felt annoyed at the disregard of orders, the matter did not affect his major lines of policy, and Decaen was safe in reckoning that the Imperial displeasure would not be severely displayed. But why he risked giving offence to Napoleon at all by the disregard of orders, there is, it would seem, nothing in Decaen"s papers to show. M. Prentout, who has studied them carefully, is driven back on the suggestion that the prolongation of the captivity was due to "entetement"--stubbornness. But it cost the administration four hundred and fifty francs per month to maintain Flinders,* (* Prentout, page 382.) and it seems improbable, when the finances of the island were difficult to adjust and severe economies were enforced, that Decaen, an economical man, would have kept up this expense year after year, disregarding alike the protests of the prisoner, the demands of Lord Wellesley and Admiral Pellew, and later, the direct orders of the French Government, unless some influence were at work and some practical interest furnished a motive. The obstinacy of Decaen is not a sufficient reason. We know, however, that it suited Freycinet very well to have Flinders detained till he could get his own charts ready, and that his atlas was precipitately published in the first instance. The connection between these occurrences and Decaen"s cruel perversity must, in the absence of clear proof, be bridged by inference, if at all.
Napoleon was, however, a soldier after all--much else as well, but a soldier first and foremost; and so was Decaen. When the general returned to France, his Imperial master had urgent need for stern, stubborn, fighting men of his type. He submitted to a court-martial* (* "Un conseil d"enquete." Biographie Universelle 10 248.) in reference to the surrender of Mauritius, but was exonerated. The discretion that he had exercised in not obeying the decree for the liberation of Flinders was evidently not made the ground of serious complaint against him, for in 1813 we find him commanding the army of Catalonia, partic.i.p.ating gallantly in the campaign of the Pyrenees, and distinguishing himself at Barcelona under Marshal Suchet. For this service he was made a Comte of the Empire. When Napoleon was banished to Elba the Comte Decaen donned the white c.o.c.kade, and took service under Louis XVIII, but on the return of his old master he, like Ney and some other of the tough warriors of the First Empire, forswore his fidelity to the Bourbons. He was one of the generals left to guard the southern frontiers of France while Napoleon played his last stake for dominion in the terrific war game that ended with the cataclysm of Waterloo. That event terminated Decaen"s military course. For a while he was imprisoned, but his life was not taken, as was that of the gallant Ney; and in a few months he was liberated at the instance of the d.u.c.h.esse d"Angouleme. Thenceforth he lived a colourless, quiet, penurious life in the vicinity of his native Caen, regretting not at all, one fancies, the ruin of the useful career of the enterprising English navigator. His poverty was honourable, for he had handled large funds during the Consulate and Empire; and there is probably as much sincerity as pathos in what he said to Soult and Gouvion-Saint-Cyr in his declining days, that nothing remained to him after thirty years of honourable service and the occupancy of high offices, except the satisfaction of having at all times done his duty. He died in 1832. His official papers fill no fewer than one hundred and forty-nine volumes and are preserved in the library of the ancient Norman city whose name he bore as his own.
CHAPTER 6. THE MOTIVES OF BONAPARTE.
Did Bonaparte desire to establish French colonial dominions in Australia?
The case stated.
We will now turn to quite another aspect of the Terre Napoleon story, and one which to many readers will be more fruitful in interest. An investigation of the work of Baudin"s expedition on the particular stretch of coast to which was applied the name of the most potent personage in modern history has necessarily demanded close application to geographical details, and a minute scrutiny of claims and occurrences. We enter into a wider historical realm when we begin to consider the motives which led Bonaparte to despatch the expedition of 1800 to 1804. Here we are no longer confined to sh.o.r.es which, at the time when we are concerned with them, were the abode of desolation and the nursery of a solitude uninterrupted for untallied ages, save by the screams of innumerable sea-birds, or, occasionally, here and there, by the corroboree cries of naked savages, whose kitchen-middens, feet thick with sh.e.l.ls, still betray the places where they feasted.
We wish to know why Bonaparte, who had overturned the Directory by the audacity of Brumaire and hoisted himself into the dominating position of First Consul in the year before Le Geographe and Le Naturaliste were sent to the South Seas, authorised the undertaking of that enterprise. Was it what it purported to be, an expedition of exploration, or was it a move in a cunning game of state-craft by a player whose board, as some would have us believe, was the whole planet? Had Bonaparte, so soon after ascending to supremacy in the Government of France, already conceived the dazzling dream of a vast world-empire acknowledging his sway, and was this a step towards the achievement of it? If not that, was he desirous by this means of striking a blow at the prestige of Great Britain, whose hero Nelson had smashed his fleet at the Nile two years before? Or had he ideals in the direction of establishing French colonial dominions in southern lat.i.tudes, and did he desire to obtain accurate information as to where the tricolour might most advantageously be planted? It ought to be possible, out of the copious store of available material relative to Napoleon"s era, to form a sound opinion on this fascinating subject. But we had better resolve to have the material before we do formulate a conclusion, and not jump to one regardless of evidence, or the lack of it.
In this inquiry very little a.s.sistance is given to the student by those cla.s.sical historians of the period to whose voluminous writings reference might naturally be made. There is not, for example, the slightest allusion to Baudin"s expedition or the Terre Napoleon incidents in Thiers" twenty-tomed Histoire du Consulat et de l"Empire; nor can the reader get much a.s.sistance from consulting many British works on the same epoch. An endeavour has, however, been made to set the facts in their right perspective, by a brilliant contemporary English historian, Dr.
John Holland Rose, somewhat curtly in his Revolutionary and Napoleonic Era, but more fully in his Life of Napoleon.* (* Life of Napoleon 1 379 to 383. Still later, in his lecture on "England"s Commercial Struggle with Napoleon," included in the Lectures on the Nineteenth Century, edited by F.A. Kirkpatrick (1908), Dr. Holland Rose pursues the same theme.) The present writer, after an independent study of the facts, is unable to share Dr. Holland Rose"s view, as will presently appear, but the desire being less to urge an opinion than to present the case in its true relations, it will be convenient to state Dr. Rose"s presentment of it before proceeding to look at it from other aspects.
"The unknown continent of Australia," says the historian, "appealed to Napoleon"s imagination, which pictured its solitudes transformed by French energy into a second fatherland." Bonaparte had "early turned his eyes to that land." He took a copy of Cook"s voyages with him to Egypt, and no sooner was he firmly installed as First Consul, than he "planned with the Inst.i.tute of France a great French expedition to New Holland."
It is represented that the Terre Napoleon maps show that "under the guise of being an emissary of civilisation, Commodore Baudin was prepared to claim half the continent for France."* (* Ibid page 381. The Terre Napoleon region is far from being half the continent of Australia, if that be what Dr. Holland Rose"s words mean. One observes, by the way, a tendency on the part of English writers to use very small maps when speaking of the size of things in Australia.) Indeed, his inquiry "about the extent of British claims on the Pacific coast was so significant as to elicit from Governor King the reply that the whole of Van Diemen"s Land and of the coast from Cape Howe on the south of the mainland to Cape York on the north, was British territory." The facts relative to the awakening of suspicion in Governor King"s mind--to be discussed hereafter--are likewise stated; together with those affecting the settlements of Hobart and Port Phillip; and it is concluded that "the plans of Napoleon for the acquisition of Van Diemen"s Land and the middle of Australia, had an effect like that which the ambition of Montcalm, Dupleix, Lally, and Peron has exerted on the ultimate destiny of many a vast and fertile territory."* (* Ibid page 382. One or two errors of fact may as well be indicated. Murray"s discovery of Port Phillip was made in 1802, not in 1801, as stated on page 380 of the Life of Napoleon; the t.i.tle of Flinders" book was not "A Voyage of Discovery to the Australian Isles" (page 381), but A Voyage to Terra Australis; Ba.s.s, the discoverer of the Strait bearing his name, was not a lieutenant (page 380), but a surgeon on H.M.S. Reliance. The Freycinet Peninsula, the French name of which is mentioned as being "still retained" (page 381), is not, it should be understood, on the Terre Napoleon coast at all, but in Eastern Tasmania. Dr. Rose"s error as to the retention of other French names has been dealt with in Chapter 4.)
These pa.s.sages submit with definiteness the view that Bonaparte, in 1800, despatched Baudin"s ships from motives of political policy. He had "plans" for the requisition of territory in Australia; he wished to found a "second fatherland" for the French; Baudin was "prepared to claim half the continent for France." Now, the reader who turns to Dr. Holland Rose"s book * (* He who turns to it without reading it through will miss an opulent source of profit and pleasure.) for references to proofs of these statements, will be disappointed. The learned author, who is usually liberal in his citation of authorities, here confines himself to the Voyage de Decouvertes of Peron and Freycinet, the Voyage of Flinders, and the collection of doc.u.ments in the seven volumes of the Historical Records of New South Wales--all works of first-cla.s.s importance, but none of them bearing out the broad general statements as to the First Consul"s plans and intentions. Not a sc.r.a.p of evidence is adduced from memoirs, letters, or state papers. To represent Napoleon as obsessed with magnificent ideas of universal dominion, scanning, like Milton"s Satan from the mountain height, the immensity of many realms, and aspiring to rule them all--to do this is to present an enthralling picture, inflaming the imagination of the reader; and, perhaps, of the writer too. But we must beware of drawing an inference and painting it to look like a fact; we must regard historical data through the clear white gla.s.s of criticism, not through the coloured window of a gorgeous generalisation.
The remainder of our task, then, shall be devoted to examining the origins of Baudin"s expedition. We will inquire into the instructions given to the commander; we will follow his vessels with a careful eye to any incidents that may point to ulterior political purposes; we will have regard to the suspicions engendered at the time, how far they were justifiable, and what consequences followed from them; we will search for motives; and we will look at what the expedition did, in case there should by any chance thereby be disclosed any hint of an aspiration towards territorial acquisition. We will try to regard the evidence as a whole, the object being--as the object of all honest historical inquiry must be--to ascertain the truth about it, freed from those jealousies and prejudices which, so freely deposited at the time, tend to consolidate and petrify until, as with the guano ma.s.sed hard on islets in Australasian seas, it is difficult to get at the solid rock beneath for the accretions upon it, and sometimes not easy to discriminate rock from accretion.
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 Pet.i.tes 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 Inst.i.tute 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 Inst.i.tute and their instructions.
Fitting out of the expedition.
Le Geographe and Le Naturaliste.
The staff.
Francois Peron.
Captain Nicolas Baudin.
French interest in southern exploration did not commence nor did it cease with the expedition of 1800 to 1804. We fall into a radical error if we regard that as an isolated endeavour. It was, in truth, a link in a chain: one of a series of efforts made by the French to solve what was, during the eighteenth century, a problem with which the scientific intellect of Europe was much concerned.
The tardy and piecemeal fashion in which definiteness was given to southern lat.i.tudes on the map of the world makes a curious chapter in the history of geographical research. After the ships of Magellan and Drake had circ.u.mnavigated the globe, and a very large part of America had been mapped, there still lay, south of the tracks of those adventurers who rounded the Horn and breasted the Pacific, a region that remained unknown--a Terra Australis, Great Southern Continent, or Terra Incognita as it was vaguely and variously termed. Map-makers, having no certain data concerning this vast uncharted area, commonly sprawled across the extremity of the southern hemisphere a purely fanciful outline of imaginary land. Terra Australis was the playground of the cartographers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. They seemed to abhor blank s.p.a.ces. Some of the most beautiful of the old maps make the oceans busy with spouting whales, sportive dolphins, and galleons with bellying sails; but what to do with the great staring expanse of vacancy at the bottom their authors did not know. So they drew a crooked line across the map to represent land, and stuck upon it the label Terra Australis, or one of the other designations just mentioned. The configuration of the territory on different maps did not agree, and not one of them signified a coast with anything like the form of the real Great Southern Continent.
To the period of fancy succeeded that of patchwork. Came the Dutch, often blown out of their true course from the Cape of Good Hope to the Spice Islands, and stumbling upon the sh.o.r.es of Western Australia. To some such accident we probably owe the piece of improved cartography shown upon Emmerie Mollineux"s map, which Hakluyt inserted in some copies of the second edition of his Princ.i.p.al Navigations, and which Shakespeare is supposed to have had in mind when, in a merry scene in Twelfth Night, he made Maria say of Malvolio (3 2 85): "He does smile his face into more lines than is in the new map with the AUGMENTATION OF THE INDIES."* (*
See Mr. Charles Coote"s paper in Transactions of New Shakespeare Society, 1877 to 1879. He read the phrase "augmentation of the Indies," as referring to this and some other additions to the map of the world, now for the first time shown. In those days, of course, "the Indies" meant pretty well everything out of Europe, including America. It is curious that Flinders called the aboriginals whom he saw in Port Phillip "Indians." Probably all coloured peoples were "Indians" to seamen even so late as his day. There is a fine copy of the map referred to in volume 1 of the 1903 edition of Hakluyt, edited by Professor Walter Raleigh.) This map marks an improvement, in the sense that an approach to the truth, probably founded on actual observation, is an improvement on a large, comprehensive piece of guess work. Emmerie Mollineux expunged the imaginary region, and subst.i.tuted a small tongue of land, shaped like a thimble. It was doubtless copied from some Dutch chart; and though we must not look for precision of outline at so early a date, it is sufficient to show that some navigator had seen, hereabouts, a real piece of Australia, and had made a note of what it looked like. It is not much, but, rightly regarded, it is like the first gleam of light on the dark sky where the dawn is to paint its radiance.
English Dampier (1686 to 1688, and 1699 to 1701) and Dutch Tasman (1642 to 1644) made the most substantial contributions to the world"s knowledge of the true form of Australia to be credited to any individual navigators before the coming of Cook, the greatest of all.
It is very strange that so long a period as a century and a half should have been allowed to lapse between Tasman"s very remarkable voyage and Flinders" completion of the outline of Australia, and that three-quarters of a century should have separated the explorations of Dampier and Cook.