Part 5 (2/2)

These pa.s.sages submit with definiteness the view that Bonaparte, in 1800, despatched Baudin's s.h.i.+ps 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 fas.h.i.+on 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 s.h.i.+ps 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.

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