"We have
nothing authentic or sufficiently minute respecting this part of the
largest island on the globe," said the instructions concerning the
northern and western coasts; but there was not a word about the eastern
shores.
The reader who reflects upon the facts set forth in this chapter
will realise that the French Revolution, surprising as the statement
may seem, affected Australian history in a remarkable way. If Louis XVI
had not been dethroned and beheaded, but had remained King of France,
there cannot be any doubt that he would have persisted in the
investigation of the South Seas. He was deeply interested in the
subject, very well informed about it, and ambitious that his country
should be a great maritime and colonising Power. But the Revolution
slew Louis, plunged France in long and disastrous wars, and brought
Napoleon to the front. The whole course of history was diverted. It was
as if a great river had been turned into a fresh channel.
If the navigator of the French King had discovered southern Australia,
and settlement had followed, it is not to be supposed that Great
Britain would have opposed the plans of France; for Australia then was
not the Australia that we know, and England had very little use even
for the bit she secured.
