Part 8 (2/2)
His protestations.
Views on colonisation.
Le Naturaliste sails for Europe.
Le Naturaliste had been unable to rejoin her consort after the tempest of March 7 and 8. She being a slow sailer, the risk of the two vessels parting company was constant, and as there had already been one separation, before the sojourn at Timor, Baudin should have appointed a rendezvous. But he had neither taken this simple precaution, nor had he even intimated to Captain Hamelin the route that he intended to pursue.
When, therefore, the storm abated, the commander of the second s.h.i.+p neither knew where to look for Le Geographe, nor had he any certain information to enable him to follow her.
Before making up his mind as to what he should do, Captain Hamelin had the good luck to pick up an open boat containing Boullanger, one of the scientific staff of Le Geographe, a lieutenant, and eight sailors. They were absent from the s.h.i.+p when the storm burst, and Baudin had sailed away without them. His conduct on this occasion had been inexplicable.
Boullanger and his party had gone out in the boat to chart a part of the coast with more detail than was possible from the deck of the corvette.
But they had not been away more than a quarter of an hour, according to Peron, when Baudin, ”without any apparent reason,” bore off the coast.
Then came the tempest, night fell, the following days were too stormy for putting off another boat to search for the missing men; and in the end, Baudin left them to their fate. They had no chart or compa.s.s, merely enough food and water to last for a day, and were abandoned on an uninhabited coast, in an open boat, in bitterly cold, squally weather, with the rain falling in sheets at frequent intervals. Here again, British kindness saved the Frenchmen. Before having the good fortune to perceive the sails of Le Naturaliste, the starved, drenched, and miserable men had attracted the attention of a sealing brig, the Snow-Harrington, from Sydney. Her skipper, Campbell, took them on board, supplied them with warm food, and offered to convey them to Port Jackson forthwith. They remained on the Snow-Harrington for the night, but on the following morning sighted Le Naturaliste, and, after profusely thanking Captain Campbell for his generosity, soon picked her up.
Hamelin, having no instructions as to where he should go, resolved to devote himself to work in Ba.s.s Strait. Eight days were spent in Westernport, the limit of Ba.s.s's discoveries in January 1798; and the name French Island preserves the memory of their researches there. They found the soil fertile, the vegetation abundant, the timber plentiful; the port was, they considered, ”one of the most beautiful that it would be possible to find, and it unites all the advantages which will make it some day a precious possession.”
But the supplies on board Le Naturaliste were becoming exhausted, and, being still without news of his chief, Hamelin decided to sail for Port Jackson. He arrived there on April 24. As far as he knew, however, the war between England and France still raged. News of the Treaty of Amiens was not received at Sydney till the middle of June. He was therefore gravely concerned about the reception that would be accorded him. He had his pa.s.sport, which protected him from molestation, but he feared that the British would ”at least refuse him succour,” of which he was desperately in need. Evidently the Snow-Harrington had not communicated to him the same welcome news as the sealing craft had given to Baudin, concerning the instructions of King George's Government.
How different was his welcome from his antic.i.p.ation! He found ”nothing but sweet peace and gentle visitation.” ”The English received him, from the first instant, with that great and cordial generosity which the perfection of European civilisation can alone explain, and which it alone can produce. The most distinguished houses in the colony were thrown open to our companions, and during the entire length of their sojourn, they experienced that delicate and affectionate hospitality, which honours equally those who bestow and those who receive it.” So Peron testified; but one cannot transcribe his words without a reflection on the sort of ”European hospitality” that Matthew Flinders received by way of contrast when he was compelled to seek, shelter in Mauritius.
Le Naturaliste was lying at anchor when Flinders' arrived with the Investigator in May. Learning from him of the meeting with Le Geographe in Encounter Bay in the previous month, and inferring that Baudin would sail for Mauritius after finis.h.i.+ng what he had to do on the southern coast, Hamelin determined also to make his way to the French colony. He left Sydney harbour on May 18, with the intention of rounding the southern extremity of Tasmania, and striking across the Indian Ocean from that point. But here again fearful storms were encountered. ”The sea was horrible; the winds blew with fury and in squalls; torrents of rain fell incessantly”; and, increasing the misfortunes, the westerly winds were so strong at the time when the s.h.i.+p was endeavouring to turn westward, that no headway could be made. Hamelin's men were already on short rations, but even so the supplies would not suffice for a voyage to Mauritius, unless a fairly rapid pa.s.sage could be made. The contrary winds, fogs, and storms of ”the roaring forties” offered no such a.s.surance; and the French captain, casting a ”longing, lingering look behind” at the comforts and hospitalities of Port Jackson, determined to double back on his tracks. He re-traversed the east coast of Tasmania, and entered Port Jackson for the second time on July 3, to find that his chief and the leading s.h.i.+p of the expedition had been snugly berthed there during the past fortnight. ”And so,” Peron comments, ”were united for the second time, and by the most inconceivable luck, two s.h.i.+ps which, owing to the obstinacy of the commandant, had had no appointed rendezvous, and were twice forced to navigate independently at two periods of the voyage when it would have been most advantageous for them to act in concert.”
As the two French vessels lay at Sydney for nearly six months, during which time the officers and men mingled freely with the population of the colony, whilst the naturalists and artists occupied themselves busily with the work of their special departments, the occurrences have a two-fold interest for one who wishes to appreciate the significance of Baudin's expedition. There is, first, the interest arising from the observations of so intelligent a foreign observer as Peron* was, concerning the British colony within fifteen years after its foundation; and there is, secondly, the special interest pertaining to the reception and treatment of the expedition by the governing authorities, their suspicions as to its motives, and the consequences which arose therefrom.
(* Curiously enough, there was another Peron who visited Port Jackson in a French s.h.i.+p in 1796, and gave an interesting account of it in a book which he wrote--Memoires du Capitaine Peron, two volumes Paris 1824. But the two men were not related. The nautical Captain Peron was born at Brest in 1769.)
Apart from Peron's writings, we have a considerable body of doc.u.mentary material, in the form of letters and despatches, which must be considered. We cannot complain of an insufficiency of evidence. It covers the transactions with amplitude; it reveals purposes fully; the story is clear.
What Peron saw of the infant settlement filled him with amazement and admiration. ”How could we fail to be surprised at the state of that interesting and flouris.h.i.+ng colony,” cried the naturalist. It was only so recently as January 26, 1788, that Captain Arthur Phillip had entered the commodious and beautiful harbour which is not eclipsed by any on the planet. Yet the French found there plentiful evidences of prosperity and comfort, and of that adaptable energy which lies at the root of all British success in colonisation. Master Thorne, in the sixteenth century, expressed the resolute spirit of that energy in a phrase: ”There is no land uninhabitable, nor sea innavigable”; and in every part of the globe this British spirit has applied itself to many a land that looked hopeless at first, and has frequently found it to be one:
”whose rich feet are mines of gold, Whose forehead knocks against the roof of stars.”
We need hardly concern ourselves with Peron's survey of the administrative system, social factors, education, commerce, agriculture, fisheries,, finance, and political prospects, valuable as these are for the student of Australian history. Nor would it further our purpose to extract at length his views on the reformative efficacy of the convict system, as to which he was certainly over sanguine. The benevolent naturalist dealt with the convicts in the next paragraph but one from that in which he had described the growing wool trade; and it would almost seem that observations which he had intended to make relative to sheep and lambs had by chance strayed amongst the enthusiastic sentences in which he related how transportation humanised criminals. ”All these unfortunates, lately the refuse and shame of their country, have become by the most inconceivable of metamorphoses, laborious cultivators, happy and peaceful citizens”; ”nowhere does one hear of thieves and murderers”; ”the most perfect security prevails throughout the colony”; ”redoubtable brigands, who were so long the terror of the Government of their country, and were repulsed from the breast of European society, have, under happier influences, cast aside their anti-social manners”; and so forth.
On this subject Peron is by no means a witness whom the sociologist can trust; though it should not escape notice that the generous temper in which he described what he saw of the convict system in operation, and his view of it as a n.o.ble experiment in reformation, indicate his desire to appraise sympathetically the uses to which the British were putting their magnificent possessions in the South Seas.
Captain Baudin's impressions of the young colony, contained in his letter to Jussieu,* (* Moniteur, 22nd Fructidor, Revolutionary Year 11.
(September 9, 1803).) are also interesting, and may with advantage be quoted, as they appear to have escaped the attention of previous writers.
”I could not regard without admiration,” he wrote, ”the immense work that the English have done during the twelve years that they have been established at Port Jackson. Although it is true that they commenced with large resources [”grands moyens”; but, indeed, they did not!] and incurred great expenditure, it is nevertheless difficult to conceive how they have so speedily attained to the state of splendour and comfort in which they now find themselves. It is true that Nature has done much for them in the beauty and security of the harbour upon which their princ.i.p.al establishment is erected; but the nature of the soil in the vicinity has compelled them to penetrate the interior of the country to find land suitable for the various crops which abundantly furnish them with the means of subsistence, and enable them to supply the wants of the European vessels which the fisheries and commerce attract to this port.”
The French visitors were far more genial in their view of the affairs of the colony than many British writers have been. It was concerning this very period that Dr. Lang said that the population consisted, apart from convicts, ”chiefly of those who sold rum and those who drank it.”
The reader must not, however, be hurried away from the subject of the convict population without the pleasure of an introduction to a delightful rascal, under sentence for forgery, with whom Peron had an interview. The ironical humour of the pa.s.sage will lighten a page; and the plausible character revealed in it might have escaped from a comedy of Moliere. Morand was his name, and his crime--”son seul crime,” wrote Peron in italics--was in having ”wished to a.s.sociate himself with the Bank of England without having an account there.”
Morand shall be permitted to tell, in his own bland, ingenuous way, how, like a patriot, he tried to achieve financially what Bonaparte failed to do by military genius; and doubtless in after years he reflected that if his own efforts brought him to Sydney Cove, Napoleon's landed him at St.
Helena.
”The war,” said Morand, ”broke out between Great Britain and France; the forces of the two nations were grappling; but it appeared to me to be easier to destroy our rival by finance than by arms. I resolved, therefore, as a good patriot, to undertake that ruin, and to accomplish it in the very heart of London. If I had succeeded,” he cried with enthusiasm, ”France would have held me in the greatest honour; and instead of being branded as a brigand, I should have been proclaimed the avenger of my country. Scarcely had I arrived in England when I commenced my operations; and at first they succeeded beyond all my hopes. a.s.sisted by an Irishman not less skilful than myself, and who, like me, was actuated by a n.o.ble patriotism, desiring even more fervently than I did the downfall of England, I was soon enabled to counterfeit the notes of the Bank with such perfection that it was even difficult for us to distinguish those which came from our own press from the genuine paper. I was at the very point of a triumph; all my preparations were made for inundating England with our manufactured notes; nothing was wanting except some information in regard to numbering them--when my companion, whom up till then I had regarded as AN HONEST MAN,* (* The italics are Peron's.) took it into his head to steal some of the notes, which were as yet defective, inasmuch as they lacked a few trifling but indispensable formalities. He was arrested almost immediately; and as he had behaved dishonourably towards me, he did not hesitate to relapse into sin in another aspect. He revealed everything to the authorities; I was arrested and plunged into prison with him; all my instruments, all our bank notes, were seized--and Great Britain was saved from the ruin which I had prepared for her!
”Evident as were the proofs of our project, I did not despair, thanks to the nature of the criminal laws of England, of escaping death; but such were the feebleness and fright of my wretched partner, that I had no doubt of our common downfall if I were compelled to appear before the tribunals in a.s.sociation with that cowardly wretch. To obviate the aggravation of my own misfortunes, which could not have prevented his, I determined to endeavour to get rid of him; and, as the author of both our disasters, it was quite right that he should suffer. In a speech to him that was very pathetic, therefore, I tried to prove to him, that, our death being inevitable, we had nothing better to think about than how best to sustain the sadness and ignominy that had come upon us; and that, death for death, it was better to fall like men of honour than under the hand of the executioner. The Irishman was moved, but not yet resolved. I then made him feel that if his own infamy did not touch him, he ought at least to spare his children the disgrace of being pointed at as the offspring of one who had been hanged; and that, if he had not been able to leave them wealth, he should at least, by an act of generous devotion, save them from that shame.
”These last reflections inflamed the Irishman with a fine courage. We managed to procure a strong corrosive acid; I feigned to take some of it; but he took it really, and died; when, disembarra.s.sed from that silly rascal, I avoided the gallows which a.s.suredly awaited me had I been tried with him. I was, instead, sentenced to transportation to this colony, where I am condemned to pa.s.s the remainder of my days. But the period of my servitude in prison is now finished; I follow with advantage two of my early trades, those of goldsmith and clockmaker.* (* He was an emancipist; that is, a convict liberated from prison confinement on probation. His two ”knaves” were also convicts. Transported men could often earn their liberty by exemplary behaviour. When Flinders went north in the Investigator, he was allowed to take nine convicts with him as part of his crew, on the promise that a good report from him would earn them their liberty; but that experiment was not a marked success. Morand, as I understand it, escaped the death penalty because the suicide of his companion prevented his being tried for conspiracy. The punishment for forgery was transportation.) The two knaves who work for me increase my profits threefold. In a few years I shall be one of the wealthiest proprietors in the colony; and I should be one of the happiest if I were not constantly tormented with regret at having so unfortunately failed in an honourable enterprise, and at being regarded on that account as a vile criminal, even by those among you, my compatriots, who cannot know the n.o.ble principles [sic ”n.o.bles principes”!] which actuated my conduct, or who cannot appreciate them.”
As the good Peron does not mention discovering that his pockets had been picked after his interview with this choice and humorous rogue, it will be agreed that he escaped from the interview with singular good fortune.
The naturalist presented a lively picture of the port of Sydney, which even in those very early days was becoming a place of consequence. There were s.h.i.+ps from the Thames and the Shannon, brought out to engage in whaling, which was an important industry then and for many years after; s.h.i.+ps from China; s.h.i.+ps laden with coal bound for India and the Cape; s.h.i.+ps engaged in the Ba.s.s Strait sealing trade; s.h.i.+ps which pursued a profitable but risky business in contraband with the Spanish South American colonies; s.h.i.+ps fitting out for the North American fur trade; s.h.i.+ps destined for enterprises among the South Sea Islands; and, lastly, there was the s.h.i.+p of ”the intrepid M. Flinders” getting ready to continue the navigations of that explorer in northern and north-western Australia. ”All this ensemble of great operations, all these movements of vessels, give to these sh.o.r.es a character of importance and activity that we did not expect to meet with in regions so little known in Europe, and our interest redoubled with our admiration.” Above all, one is glad to notice, Peron was interested in the boat in which George Ba.s.s had accomplished that ”audacieuse navigation,” the discovery of Ba.s.s Strait, in 1797 and 1798. It was, at the date of this visit to Sydney, preserved in the port with a sort of ”religious respect,” and small souvenirs made out of a portion of its keel were regarded as precious relics by those who possessed them. Governor King believed that he could not make a more honourable present to Baudin than a piece of the wood of the boat enclosed in a silver frame, upon which he had had engraved a short statement of the facts of Ba.s.s's remarkable exploit.
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