The Collections Were, As King Wrote To Sir
Joseph Banks, "Immense."* (* Historical Records 4 844.) Le Geographe And
The Casuarina Left On December 27, And Sailed Direct For Kangaroo Island,
To Resume In That Neighbourhood The Charting Which Baudin Had Abandoned
In The Previous Year.
They did not, as the logs show, make any attempt to
examine Port Phillip.
Robbins and his seventeen guardians of British
rights on the Cumberland remained for some time longer making a thorough
examination; after which they sailed for Port Phillip, and Grimes made
the first complete survey of that great sheet of water.
It is only necessary to add that King reported to the Admiralty his
approval of Robbins' action, and that to "make the French commander
acquainted with my intention of settling Van Diemen's Land was all I
sought by this voyage." But it is obvious from a letter which he wrote to
Banks, after Baudin's death, and after his soul had been moved to
righteous wrath by the iniquitous treatment of Flinders - whom he so
warmly admired and so loyally aided - that suspicion, once implanted in
King's mind, was not eradicated by explicit disavowals. Had Baudin lived
another year, he said, "I think it very possible that the commodore would
most likely have visited the colony for the purpose of annihilating the
settlement." But surely here, if ever, the lines were applicable:
"In the night imagining some fear,
How easy is a bush supposed a bear!"
Baudin, after his remarkable exploits in 1800 to 1804, was the last man
whom Napoleon would have chosen to try to annihilate a British settlement
anywhere.
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