Part 6 (1/2)

Here, crooned over by her great gum forests, baring her broad breast of plains to the sun and moon, lay a land holding within her immense solitudes unimaginable wealth; genial in climate, rich in soil, abounding in mineral treasures, fit to be a home for happy, industrious millions.

Yet, while avarice and enterprise schemed and fought for the west and the east, this treasury of the south remained unsolicited. It is not for us to regret that Australia was left for a race that knew how to woo her with affection and to conquer her with their science and their will, yet we can but wonder that fortune should have been so tardy and so reticent in disclosing a fifth division of the globe.

While this piecing together of the outline of the continent was proceeding, speculation was naturally rife among men of science as to what countries southern lat.i.tudes contained, and what their capabilities were. It was essentially a scientific problem awaiting solution; and it is not surprising that the French, quick-brained, inquisitive, eager in pursuit of ideas, should have been active in this field.

Their intellectual concern with South Sea discovery may be said to date from the publication of the Pet.i.tes Lettres of Pierre Louis Moreau de Maupertuis. He was, like some of whom Browning has written, a ”person of some importance in his day,” and his writings on physics are still mentioned with respect in works devoted to the history of science. But he is perhaps chiefly remembered as the savant whom Frederick the Great attracted to his court during a period of aloofness from the scintillating Voltaire, and who consequently became a writhing target for the jealous ridicule of that waspish wit. Poor Maupertuis, unhappy in his exit from life, would appear to have been restless after it, for his ghost is averred to have stalked in the hall of the Academy of Berlin, and to have been seen by a brother professor there, the remarkable phenomenon being solemnly recorded in the Transactions of that learned body.* (* See Sir Walter Scott's Demonology and Witchcraft, Letter 1.) But of far more practical importance than the appearance of his perturbed shade, was the effect of his Pet.i.tes Lettres, which suggested twelve projects for the advancement of knowledge, one of which was the promotion of discovery in the southern hemisphere.

Shortly after its publication, Maupertuis' proposition was discussed by a society of accomplished students meeting at Dijon, the ancient capital of Burgundy. A member of the Society to whom much deference was paid, was Charles de Brosses, lawyer, scholar, and President of the Parlement of the Province.* (* The local parliaments were abolished in the reign of Louis XV, reinstated by Louis XVI, and finally swept away in the stormy demolition of ancient inst.i.tutions to make ground for the const.i.tution of 1791.) De Brosses was an industrious student and writer, the translator of Sall.u.s.t into French, and author of several valuable historical and philological works, including a number of learned papers which may be read--or not--in the stout calf-bound quartos enshrining the records of the Academy of Inscriptions.* (* His papers in that regiment of tomes range over a period of fifty years, from 1746 to 1796. They deal chiefly with Roman history, and especially with points suggested by the author's profound study of Sall.u.s.t. Gibbon pays De Brosses the compliment of quoting two of his works, and commends his ”SINGULAR diligence,” with emphasis on the adjective. (See Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Bury's edition 4 37 and 7 168.) He was also Voltaire's landlord at Tournay, and had a quarrel with him about a matter of firewood; but De Brosses was a lawyer, whilst Voltaire was only a philosopher and a poet, so that of course the result was ”qu'il enrage d'avoir enfin a payer.”*

(* Lanson's Voltaire page 139.)

The discussion at Dijon was more fruitful in results than such colloquies usually are. De Brosses was especially struck with the utility of exploration in southern seas, and considered that the French nation should take the lead in such an endeavour. He spoke for a full hour in support of this particular suggestion of Maupertuis, and when he had finished his fellow-members a.s.sured him that what he had advanced was so novel and interesting that he would do well to expand his ideas into an essay, to be read at the next meeting. De Brosses did more: for he wrote two solid quarto volumes, published at Paris in 1756--”avec approbation et privilege du Roy,” as the t.i.tle page says--in which he related all that he could learn about previous voyages to the south, and pointed out, with generous amplitude, in limpid, fluent French, the desirableness of pursuing further discoveries there. Incidentally he coined a useful word: to Monsieur le President Charles de Brosses we owe the name ”Australasia.”* (* De Brosses, Histoire des Navigations aux Terres Australes 1 426 and 2 367. Max Muller, in his Lectures on the Origin of Religion page 59, stated that De Brosses coined three valuable words, ”fetis.h.i.+sm,” ”Polynesia,” and ”Australia.” He certainly did not originate the word Australia, which does not occur anywhere in his book. Quiros, in 1606, named one of the islands of the New Hebrides group Austrialia del Espiritu Santo, though he seems to have done so in compliment to Philip III, who ruled Austria as well as Spain. See Markham, Voyages of Quiros volume 1 page 30 Hakluyt Society. ”Australasia” was De Brosses' new name for a broad division of the globe. He derived it from the Latin australis = southern + Asia.)

A work written over one hundred and fifty years ago, recommending a project long since completed, can hardly be expected to be full of living interest. Yet this book of De Brosses, apart from the research which it evinced, was infused with a large, humane spirit that lifted it high above the level of a prospectus. The author had a sense of patriotism that looked beyond the aggrandis.e.m.e.nt that might accrue from extensive acquisitions, to the ideal of spreading French civilisation as a beneficent force. He wished his country to share in a great work of discovery that would redound to its glory as well as to its influence.

Glory, he wrote, in a fine piece of French prose, is the dominant pa.s.sion of kings; but their common and inveterate error is to search for it in war--that is to say, in the reciprocal misfortunes of their subjects and their neighbours. But there never is any true glory for them unless the happiness of nations is the object of their enterprises. In the task which he recommended, the grandeur of the object was joined to utility.

To augment the lands known to civilised mankind by a new world, and to enrich the old world with the natural products of the new--this would be the effect of the fresh discoveries that he antic.i.p.ated. What comparison could there be between such a project and the conquest--it might be the unjust conquest--of some ravaged piece of territory, of two or three fortresses battered by cannon and acquired by the ma.s.sacre, the ruin, the desolation, and the regrets of the vanquished people; bought, too, at a price a hundred times greater than would suffice for the entire voyage of discovery proposed. He pointed out that the task could only be taken in hand by a government; it was too large for individuals. But the result was certain. In truth, to succeed in the complete discovery of the Terres Australes, it was not necessary to have any other end in view than success: it was simply necessary to employ proper means and sufficient forces.

De Brosses discussed the probably most advantageous situation for settlement in the South Seas, though in doing so he was hampered by insufficient knowledge. Relying upon the reports of Tasman, he considered New Zealand and ”la terre de Diemen”--that is, Tasmania--too distant and too little known for an experiment; whilst the narratives of Dampier did not make those parts of New Holland that he had visited--the west and north of Australia--appear attractive. On the whole, he favoured the island to the east of Papua-New Guinea--known as New Britain (now New Pomerania), and the Austrialia del Espiritu Santo of the Spanish navigator Quiros as very suitable. It is interesting to note that the present French settlements in the New Hebrides embrace the latter island, whilst their possessions in the New Caledonia group are quite close; so that ultimately they have planted themselves on the very spot which a century and a half ago the savant of Dijon considered best fitted for them. De Brosses admitted that the establishment of such settlements as he recommended would not be the work of a day. Great enterprises require great efforts. It is for individuals to measure years, he loftily said; nations calculate by centuries. Powerful peoples must take extended views of things; and kings, as their chiefs, animated by the desire of glory and the love of country and of humanity, ought to consider themselves as personalities persisting always, and working for eternity.* (* The pa.s.sages summarised are to be found in De Brosses, 1: 4, 8, 11, 19; and 2: 368, 380, 383.)

The elevated tone of De Brosses' book was calculated to make a telling appeal to the French nation, with their love of eclat and their ready receptivity. It was made, too, in the age of Voltaire, when the great man was living at Lausanne; and when, too, another of equally enduring fame, Edward Gibbon, was, in the same neighbourhood, polis.h.i.+ng those balanced periods in which he has related the degeneracy of the successors of the Caesars. It was an age of intellectual ferment. Rousseau was writing his Contrat Social (1760), the Encyclopedie was leavening Gallic thought.

There was a particular p.r.o.neness to accept fresh ideas; a new sense of national consciousness was awakening.

The effect of the President's work was almost immediate. De Brosses published it in 1756; and in 1766 Louis de Bougainville sailed from France in command of La Boudeuse and L'Etoile on a voyage around the world.* (* See the Voyage du Monde par la frigate du Roi La Boudeuse et la flute L'Etoile en 1766, 1767, 1768, 1769, by Louis de Bougainville, Paris, 1771.) A eulogy p.r.o.nounced on De Brosses before the Academy of Inscriptions by Dupuy* (* Memoirs of the Academy of Inscriptions 42 177.) hardly put the case too strongly when it was said that before he died he had the satisfaction to see in Europe men animated by his spirit, who had gone forth, braving the risks of a long voyage, to make discoveries; though the prophecy that centuries to come would doubtless count to his glory the achievements of navigators has not been verified. The world is perhaps too little inclined to accord to him who promulgates an idea the praise readily bestowed upon those who realise it.

Bougainville discovered the Navigator Islands, re-discovered the Solomon group, and was only just forestalled by the Englishman, Wallis, in the discovery of Tahiti. He produced a book of travel which may be read with scarcely less interest than the wonderful work of his contemporary, Cook.

The voyage of Nicholas Marion-Dufresne (1771) differed from the other French expeditions of the series in that one of the s.h.i.+ps belonged to the commander, and part of the cost was sustained by him. He was fired by a pa.s.sion for exploration, which led him to propose that he should take out his vessel, Le Mascurin, in company with a s.h.i.+p of the navy, and that a grant should be made to him from the public funds. The French Government acquiesced, and gave him Le Marquis de Castries. He did some exploring in southern Tasmania, but his career was cut short in New Zealand, where, in the Bay of Islands, he was killed and eaten by Maories in 1772.* (*

Rochon, Nouveau Voyage a la Mar du Sud, Paris 1783.) One of the objects of the voyage was to take back to Tahiti a native woman, Aontouron, who had been brought to Paris by Bougainville to be shown at the court of Louis XV; but she died of smallpox en route.

Again, in 1785, the expedition commanded by the ill-fated La Perouse sailed from France on a discovery voyage.* (* See the Voyage de la Perouse, redige par M. L.A. Milet-Mureau, volume 1 Paris 1797.) The appearance of his two s.h.i.+ps, La Boussole and l'Astrolabe, in Port Jackson only a fortnight after Governor Phillip had landed in Botany Bay to establish the first British settlement in Australia, was an event not less surprising to the governor than to La Perouse, who had left France before colonisation was intended by the English Government, though he heard of it in the course of the voyage. The French navigator remained in the harbour from February 23 to March 10 (1788), on excellent terms with Phillip; and then, sailing away to pursue his discoveries, ”vanished trackless into blue immensity, and only some mournful mysterious shadow of him hovered long in all heads and hearts.” His remark to Captain King, ”Mr. Cook has done so much that he has left me nothing to do but admire his work,” indicated the generous candour of his disposition. His fate after he sailed from Sydney remained a mystery for forty years, Flinders, on his voyage inside the Barrier Reef in 1802, kept a lookout for wreckage that might afford a key to the problem. He wrote: ”The French navigator La Perouse, whose unfortunate situation, if in existence, was always present to my mind, had been wrecked, as it was thought, somewhere in the neighbourhood of New Caledonia; and if so the remnants of his s.h.i.+ps were likely to be brought upon this coast by the trade winds, and might indicate the situation of the reef or island which had proved so fatal to him. With such an indication, I was led to believe in the possibility of finding the place; and though the hope of restoring La Perouse or any of his companions to their country and friends could not, after so many years, be rationally entertained, yet to gain some knowledge of their fate would do away with the pain of suspense, and it might not be too late to retrieve some doc.u.ments of their discoveries.*

(* Flinders, Voyage 2 48.) The vigilance of Flinders to this end indicates the fascination which the mysterious fate of the French mariner had for seamen, until doubts were finally set at rest in 1827, when one of the East India Company's s.h.i.+ps, under Captain Dillon, found at Manicolo, in the New Hebrides, traces of the wreckage of the vessels of La Perouse. Native tradition enabled the history of the end of the expedition to be ascertained. The French s.h.i.+ps, on a dark and stormy night, were both driven on the reef, and soon pounded to match-wood. A few of the sailors got ash.o.r.e, but most were drowned; and the bulk of the remainder were lost in an unsuccessful attempt to make for civilised regions from the coral isolation of Manicolo. A monument to the memory of the gallant La Perouse, on the coast a few miles from Sydney, now fronts the Pacific whose winds wafted him to his doom, and beneath whose waters he found his grave.

The next link in the chain was furnished by the expedition commanded by Bruni Dentrecasteaux, who, while the hurricane of the Revolution was raging, was despatched (1791) to search for La Perouse. He made important discoveries on his own account,* (* Voyage de Dentrecasteaux, redige par M. de Rossel, Paris 1808; Labillardiere, Relation du Voyage a la Recherche de la Perouse, Paris 1800.) both on the mainland of Australia and in Tasmania; and though he found no trace of his predecessor, his own name is honourably remembered among the eminent navigators who did original work in Australasia. It was Dentrecasteaux's hydrographer, Beautemps Beaupre, whose charting of part of the southern coast of Australia was so highly praised by Flinders.

The expeditions thus enumerated were all despatched before the era of Napoleon, and appreciation of their objects cannot therefore be complicated by doubts as to his Machiavellian designs. Bougainville's voyage, and that of Marion-Dufresne, were promoted under Louis XV, that of La Perouse under Louis XVI, and Dentrecasteaux's under the Revolutionary a.s.sembly. Each was an expedition of discovery.

Next came the expedition commanded by Nicolas Baudin, with which we are mainly concerned, and which was despatched under the Consulate. It will presently be demonstrated that it did not differ in purpose from its predecessors, and that there is nothing to show that in authorising it Bonaparte had any other object than that professed. But before pursuing that subject, let it be made clear that French exploring expeditions to the South Seas were continued after the final overthrow of the Empire.

In 1817, while Napoleon was mewed up in St. Helena, and a Bourbon once more occupied the throne of France as Louis XVIII, the s.h.i.+ps Uranie and Physicienne were sent out under the command of Captain Louis de Freycinet, the cartographer of Baudin's expedition.* (* Voyage autour du Monde, entrepris par ordre du Roi, par Louis de Freycinet, Paris 1827.) They visited some of the scenes of former French exploits, and Freycinet took advantage of his position on the west coast to pull down and appropriate for the French Academy of Inscriptions the oldest memorial of European presence in Australia. That is to say, he took the plate put up by the Dutchman Vlaming in 1697, in place of that erected in 1616 by Dirk Haticks on the island bearing the name of ”Dirk Hartog,” to commemorate his visit in the s.h.i.+p Eendraght of Amsterdam.* (* Ibid 1 449.) Freycinet had desired to take the plate when he was an officer on Le Naturaliste in July 1801, but Captain Hamelin, the commander, would not permit it to be disturbed. On the contrary, he set up a new post with the plate affixed to it, and expressed the opinion that to remove an interesting memorial that for over a century had been spared by nature and by man, would be to commit a kind of sacrilege.* (* ”Il eut pense commettre un sacrilege en gardant a son bord cette plaque respectee pendant pres de deux siecles par la nature et par les hommes qui pouvoient avant nous l'avoir observee.” Peron, Voyage de Decouvertes 1 195.) Freycinet was not so scrupulous.

Again, in 1824, the Baron de Bougainville, a son of the older navigator, and who as a junior officer had sailed with Baudin, took out the s.h.i.+ps Thetis and Esperance on a voyage to the South Seas, for purely geographical purposes;* (* Journal de la Navigation autour du monde de la fregate La Thetis et de la corvette L'Esperance, pendant les annees 1824-1826; publie par ordre du Roi. Par M. le Baron de Bougainville.) and still later, in 1826 to 1828, during the reign of Charles X, Dumont d'Urville, in the Astrolabe, did valuable exploratory work, especially in the Western Pacific.* (* Voyage de la corvette L'Astrolabe, execute par ordre du Roi, pendant les annees 1826-1829, sous le commandement de M. J.

Dumont D'Urville, Paris 1830.)

The whole of these expeditions, with the partial exception of that of Marion-Dufresne, were conducted in s.h.i.+ps of the French navy, commanded by French officers, supported by French funds, and their official records were published at the expense of the French Government. A certain unity of purpose characterised them; and that purpose was as purely and truly directed to extend man's knowledge of the habitable earth as was that of any expedition that ever sailed under any flag.

To attempt, therefore, to isolate Baudin's expedition from the series to which it rightly belongs, simply because it was undertaken while Bonaparte was at the head of the State, is to convey a false idea of it.

If there were any evidence to show that it differed from the others in its aims, it would be quite proper to make it stand alone. But there is not.

Nor must it be supposed that this particular enterprise originated with the First Consul. It was not a scheme generated in his teeming brain, like the strategy of a campaign, or a masterstroke of diplomacy. It was placed before him for approval in the shape of a proposition from the Inst.i.tute of France, a scientific body, concerned not with political machinations, but with the advancement of knowledge. The Inst.i.tute considered that there was useful work to be done by a new expedition of discovery, and believed it to be its duty to submit a plan to the Government. We are so informed by Peron, and there is the best of reasons for believing him.* (* ”L'honneur national et le progres des sciences parmi nous se reunissoient donc pour reclamer une expedition de decouvertes aux Terres Australes, et l'Inst.i.tut de France crut devoir la proposer au gouvernement.” Peron, Voyage de Decouvertes 1 4.) The history of the voyage was published after Napoleon had become Emperor, under his sanction, at the Imperial Press. If his had been the originating mind, it is quite certain that credit for the idea would not have been claimed for others. On the contrary, we should probably have had an adulatory paragraph from Peron's pen about the beneficence of the Imperial will as exercised in the cause of science.

Quite apart from Peron's statement, however, there are three official declarations to the like effect. First there is the announcement in the Moniteur* (* 23rd Floreal, Revolutionary Year 8; ”L'Inst.i.tut national a demande au premier consul, et a obtenu.) that it was the Inst.i.tute which requested Bonaparte to sanction the expedition. Secondly, when Vice-Admiral Rosily reported to the Minister of Marine on Freycinet's charts in 1813,* (* Moniteur, January 15, 1813.) he commenced by observing that the expedition ”had for its object the completion of the knowledge of the coasts of New Holland which were not hitherto entirely known.” Thirdly, Henri de Freycinet, writing in 1808,* (* Ibid July 2, 1808.) said that it was the high interest stimulated by the voyages of La Perouse and Dentrecasteaux that made the Inst.i.tute eagerly desirous of a new enterprise devoted to the reconnaissance of Australia. The last two statements were, it will be observed, published by Napoleon's official organ when the Empire was at its height.

There is no positive evidence as to what members of the Inst.i.tute were chiefly instrumental in formulating the proposal for Napoleon's consideration. We do not know whether leading members explained their scheme to him orally, or laid before him a written statement. If there was a plan in ma.n.u.script, the text of it has never been published.* (*