Part 4 (1/2)

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 a.s.sociated with that boil of sea.”*

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

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

The south and west of Kangaroo Island were, however, first charted by Baudin, and his names survive there. Flinders had marked these sh.o.r.es 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 circ.u.mstance,” 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 ma.n.u.script journal which he succeeded in getting conveyed to England. It was this ma.n.u.script 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 s.h.i.+ning 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 embarra.s.sing 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 princ.i.p.al chart, most of the names changed to those given by Flinders and Grant, and a neat note in the corner taking the place of the former eagle--which was moulting; no longer the screaming fowl it used to be--announcing that ”this map of New Holland is an exact reduction of that contained in the first edition.”* (* ”Cette carte de la Nouvelle-Hollande est une reduction exacte de celle contenue dans la premiere edition du Voyage aux Terres Australes.”) The announcement was not quite true. It was not ”une reduction exacte.” The imperial bird had flown, and the names had undergone systematic revision. The Bonaparte family were pitilessly evicted. It was a new and smaller map, with a new allocation of names. Freycinet's name appeared upon it, and he probably wrote the inscription in the corner.

CHAPTER 5. DID THE FRENCH USE FLINDERS' CHARTS?

a.s.sertions commonly made as to French plagiarism of Flinders' charts.

Lack of evidence to support the charges.

General Decaen and his career.

The facts as to Flinders' charts.

The sealed trunks.

The third log-book and its contents; detention of it by Decaen, and the reasons for his conduct.

Restoration of Flinders' papers, except the log-book and despatches.

Do Freycinet's charts show evidence of the use of Flinders' material?

How did the French obtain their chart of Port Phillip?

Peron's report to Decaen as to British intentions in the Pacific and Indian Oceans, and the effect on his mind.

Liberation of Flinders.

Capture of Mauritius by the British.

English naval officers and the governor.

Later career of Decaen.

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

Many loose statements have been written about the use which the French made of Flinders' charts while he was held in captivity. It has been too often taken for granted that the evidence of plagiarism is beyond dispute. Not only popular writers, but historians with claims to be considered scientific, are substantially in agreement on this point. Two examples will indicate what is meant. Messrs. Becke and Jeffery, in their Naval Pioneers of Australia (page 216), a.s.sert 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 s.h.i.+ps the credit of his discoveries.”* (* Volume 9 page 739 (Professor Egerton). Two more examples may be cited. Thus, Laurie, Story of Australasia (1896) page 86. ”He found that his journals and charts had been stolen by the French governor of the Mauritius and transferred to Paris, where the fullest advantage was taken of them by M.

Peron.” Again, Jose, Australasia (1901) page 21: ”His maps were taken to France to be published there with French names as the work of French explorers.”)

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

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

Before proving these statements, it will be convenient to make the reader acquainted with the Captain-General or Military-Governor of Mauritius, Charles Decaen. He was a rough, dogged, somewhat brutal type of soldier, who had attained to eminence during the revolutionary wars. Born at Caen in Normandy in 1769, he served during his youth for three years in the artillery, and then entered a lawyer's office in his native town; but during the wars of the Revolution, when France was pressed by enemies on all sides, he threw aside quills and parchments, and, in his twenty-third year, entered upon his strenuous fighting career. Thenceforth, until after the signing of the Treaty of Luneville in 1801, he was almost constantly engaged in military operations. He had risen from the ranks, and won commendation for stubborn valour from such commanders as Desaix, Kleber, Hoche, Westermann, and Moreau. He partic.i.p.ated in the cruel war of La Vendee, won fresh laurels during the campaign of the Rhine (1796), and fought with a furious l.u.s.t for battle under the n.o.ble 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, coa.r.s.e, downright soldier; a true Norman, and a thorough son of the Revolution.

He was not the kind of man to be interested in navigation, discovery, or the expansion of human knowledge; and appeals made to him on these grounds on behalf of Flinders were futile. Yet we must do justice to the admirable side of Decaen's character, by observing that he bore a reputation for generosity among his fellow-soldiers; and he was a very efficient and economical governor, maintaining a reputation for probity that did not distinguish too many of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic generals. Flinders, just in his opinion even of an enemy, wrote to Sir Joseph Banks that Decaen bore among the people of the island ”the character of having a good heart, though too hasty and violent.” It is pleasant to find him writing thus of the man who had wronged him, at a time when he had good reason for feeling bitter; and we certainly need not think worse of Decaen than did the man who suffered most from the general's callous insensibility.

Now, the clear facts with regard to the taking from Flinders of his charts, papers, log-books, and journals are these. On December 17, the day after his arrival at the island, it was signified to him that the governor intended to detain him. All his charts and journals relating to the voyage, and the letters and official packets which he was carrying to England from Sydney, were put in a trunk, which was sealed by Flinders at the desire of the French officers who were sent by Decaen to arrest him.

He signed a paper certifying that all the ”charts, journals, and papers of the voyage” had been thus placed in the trunk.* (* Flinders, Voyage 2 361.) On the following day (Sunday, December 18) he was informed that the governor wished to have extracts made from his journals, showing the causes which had compelled him to quit the Investigator, for which s.h.i.+p and for no other, according to Decaen's contention, the pa.s.sport 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 a.s.sistance to the c.u.mberland which had been ordered for the Investigator.” So far he had not, as a fact, granted any a.s.sistance to the c.u.mberland; for the imprisonment of her commander and crew can hardly be called ”a.s.sistance.” But as Flinders was convinced that an examination of his latest log-book would manifest his bona fides, and a.s.sure both the governor and the French Government that he was no spy, as Decaen accused him of being, he broke the seal of the trunk, and took out ”the third volume of my rough log-book, which contained the whole of what they desired to know, and pointing out the parts in question to the secretary, told him to make such extracts as should be thought requisite.”* (*

Flinders, Voyage 2 364.) All the other papers and books were at once returned to the trunk, and sealed as before.

The third log-book was the only doc.u.ment pertaining to Flinders'