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tten 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 st

al 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 (

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. Inde

cinet 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 re

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

as 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

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 o

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 embodyin

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,

e 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 applicat

ents 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 missi

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 imposs

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 ch

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 Ca

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 Péron 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 Péron 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 Fli

ilt 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 acco

rst 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. Péron et Flinders sont morts; l'un et l'autre ont des titres cer

charts, and inside soundings were actually shown, neither the port nor t

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

a little later. But let us first see how the drawing of Port P

ound 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 B

h. 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,

d 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 a

ly 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

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

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 ma

onth, 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 gu

n have obtained such a chart

'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

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 astronom

acy 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

ublication, 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 authors

from Flinders, though not at all likely that they were able to obtain a

bviously, it would have been honest to do so. All he did was to insert two lines at the bottom of the page i

re 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 Cumberland 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 i

aphe sailed from the island, Péron set his views on paper in a report to Decaen, stating that his interviews with officers, magistrates, clergymen, and other classes of people in Sydney, had convinced him that his anticipations 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.* (* Péron's report to General Decaen is given in M. He

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 Péron'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 Péron, who had not "spied" in Port Jackson, because the English there had

s was undoubtedly smarting under a sense of wrong at the time, but discourtesy was by no means a feature of his character; and

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 Péron, 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 eviden

aen 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 S

r'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 wo

CHARLE

trait in the

s service he was made a Comte of the Empire. When Napoleon was banished to Elba the Comte Decaen donned the white cockade, 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 Duchesse d'Angouleme. Thenceforth he lived