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.
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 latitudes 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 Petites Lettres of Pierre Louis Moreau de
Maupertuis.
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