A Similar Disregard Of The Fact That Baudin Died Before The
Return Of His Ships Occurs In J.E. Tenison
Woods' History of Exploration
in Australia (1865) volume 1 page 174, where we are informed that
Flinders was detained in
Mauritius, because "at that time the Emperor
Napoleon was obliging Admiral Baudin [sic] to usurp the glory of his
discoveries"; a case of post-mortem promotion.) Not only is there no
evidence to support any such charge, but Flinders himself never accused
Decaen of making an improper use of the papers in the trunk, nor did he
ever allege that the two charts contained in the French atlas of 1807, or
those in Freycinet's folio atlas of 1812 - which he probably saw before
his death in July 1814 - were founded upon or owed anything to his
drawings. He simply set forth the facts with his habitual exactness and
fairness; and where Flinders was just, there is surely no warrant for
others to perpetuate an accusation which originated in a period of
intense national hatred and jealousy, and bears its birth-mark upon it.
A critical examination of Freycinet's charts is alone sufficient to
shatter the opinion that he utilised the drawings of the English
navigator. Had he even seen them, his own work would have been more
accurate than it was, and his large chart of New Holland would have been
more complete. It has already been shown that the French chart of the
so-called Terre Napoleon coasts was in large measure defective, many
capes, islands, and bays being represented that have no existence in
fact, and a large portion of the outline being crudely and erroneously
drawn.
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