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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 twe

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

esponsibility, and later--though the evidence on this point is not specific--in accordance with influences from Paris; and that during his imprisonment an a

TERRE N

cinet's A

n 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,

r 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 n

he 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 sh

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 mean

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 vol

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

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

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. Furthe

lume 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 the

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 we

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

rue 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

rs 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 Fr

ving 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-c

lat, 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

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 com

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 Brit

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

ndy 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

and reckless as

our harbo

glish") of the people of Melbourne. It is

ROCK, KANG

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 G

le 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

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 th