But The Charts Detailed In The Table Were Not Issued With The
Book.
They were not ready, and the table stands as an eloquent indicator
of the hurry in which the publication was performed.
The first volume of
the Voyage de Decouvertes contains numerous marginal references to charts
not contained in the atlas issued with it. Readers of the book must have
been puzzled by these references,* (* As the present writer was when he
began to study the subject closely, and as the Quarterly reviewer was in
1810. He said: "The atlas is of quarto size; it contains not a single
chart nor any sketch or plan of a coast, island, bay, or harbour, though
frequent references are made to such in the margin of the printed volume"
(page 60). The reviewer should have said, "except the two cartes
generales" described on a previous page.) when they turned to the atlas
and found no charts corresponding with them. Freycinet's complete folio
volume of charts was not published till 1812, five years after the issue
of the book which they were necessary to explain. Flinders had then been
released; but it is significant that he was held in the clutches of
General Decaen, despite constant demands for his liberation, until the
preparation of the French charts was sufficiently advanced to make it
impossible for his own to be issued until theirs had been placed before
the world.
Flinders, generous in his judgments of other men even when smarting under
great grievances, put forth an excuse for Peron, suggesting that he had
acted under pressure. "How, then, came M. Peron to advance what was so
contrary to truth?" he wrote. "Was he a man destitute of all principle?
My answer is, that I believe his candour to have been equal to his
acknowledged abilities, and that what he wrote was from overruling
authority, and smote him to the heart. He did not live to finish the
second volume."
This would be an acceptable way of disposing of the question if we could
reasonably accept the explanation. But can we? Freycinet denied that any
pressure was exerted. Those who knew Peron's character, he wrote,* (*
Voyage de Decouvertes 2 page 21.) were aware that he would have refused
to do anything with which his conscience could reproach him. He was so
able and zealous a man of science, that we should like to believe that of
him. justice demands that we should give full weight to every favourable
factor in the case as affecting him. Flinders was a British naval
officer, and naval men at that period were disposed to see the hand of
Napoleon in every bit of mischief. But the "pressure" theory does not
sustain examination.
The task thrust upon Peron in the writing of the historical narrative of
the voyage was one for which he had not prepared himself, and which did
not properly pertain to him. The death of Baudin, whose work this would
naturally have been, compelled the naturalist to become historian. He had
not kept the log, and it may be reasonably assumed that he had not
concerned himself in a particular degree with those events of which he
would have made careful notes had it been intended from the beginning
that he should be the official recorder. He had applied himself with
passionate energy to the collection and classification of zoological
specimens. This was his special vocation, and he pursued it worthily. It
is probably safe to say that no expedition, French or English, that ever
came down to Australasian waters, added so much that was new to the
world's scientific knowledge, or accumulated so much material, as did
this one whose chief naturalist was Francois Peron. When it is added that
two of the greatest figures in British scientific history, Darwin and
Huxley, were among the workers in this fruitful field, it will be
admitted that the acknowledgment is not made in any niggard spirit. But
we are now concerned with Peron as historian of what related to Terre
Naploeon and the surrounding circumstances. Here his statements have been
shown to be unreliable. It is probable that he wrote largely from memory;
almost certainly from insufficient data. Further, he was weak and ill
when engaged upon the book. The hardships and unhealthy conditions of the
voyage had undermined his constitution. One would conclude from his style
of writing that he was by temperament excitable and easily subject to
depression. A zealous savant, to whom fishes and birds, beetles and
butterflies, were the precious things of the earth, and for whom the
discovery of a new species was as great a source of joy as a glorious
victory was to his imperial master, Peron appeals to us as a pathetic
figure whom one would rather screen from blame than otherwise. He
suffered severely, and did his final work under the difficulty of
breaking health. He died in 1810, before his second volume was ready for
publication.
Freycinet wrote a series of notes by way of preface to volumes 2 and 3,
in attempted justification of the Terre Napoleon maps.* (* The second
volume of the Voyage de Decouvertes was published - out of its due
order - in 1816, the third in 1815.) He was put on the defensive because
"the audacious attempt which was made in the first volume of this work,
to rob Captain Flinders of the well-earned merit of his nautical labours
and discoveries, while he was basely and barbarously kept in prison in a
French colony, was regarded with becoming indignation throughout Europe,
and with shame by the better part of the French nation."* (* Quarterly
Review volume 17 (1817) page 229.) That that is a fair description of the
state of feeling among people concerned with the advancement of
knowledge, is beyond question; and the French above all, with their love
of enterprise, their sentiment of honour, their eager applause of high
achievement, their chivalrous sense of justice, and their quick sympathy
with suffering wrongly inflicted and bravely borne, would have no taste
for laurels plucked in their name from the brow of him who was entitled
to wear them.
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