Brown Was The Only Person Present At The First
Interview On The 8th, And At The Second On The Following Morning;* (* "No
Person Was Present At Our Conversations Except Mr. Brown" (Flinders,
Voyage 1 190).
Robert Brown was a very celebrated botanist.
Humboldt
styled him "botanicorum facile princeps." His Prodromus Florae Novae
Hollandiae is a classic of price.) both taking place in the French
captain's cabin. Peron, in the first volume of the Voyage de Decouvertes,
wrote as though he were present and heard what occurred between the two
commanders. "En nous fournissant tous ces details M. Flinders se montre
d'une grande reserve sur ses operations particulieres," he wrote; and
again: "apres avoir converse plus d'une heure avec nous." But his
testimony in this, as in several other respects, is not reliable. Baudin
wrote no detailed account of the conversations, nor did Brown; but
Flinders related what occurred with the minute care that was habitual
with him. Peron's evidence is at best second-hand, and he supplemented it
with such information as could be elicited by "pumping" the sailors in
Flinders' boat.* (* "Nous apprimes toutefois par quelques-uns de ses
matelots qu'il avoit eu beaucoup a souffrir de ces memes vents de la
partie du Sud qui nous avoient ete si favorables." The boatmen were not
questioned by Peron himself, who at this time could not speak English
(Freycinet, Voyage de Decouvertes 2 Preface page 17). Freycinet admits
that Peron was not present at the interviews, but says that Baudin
related what took place with "more or less exactitude." But as Freycinet
was not present himself either at the interviews or on the ship when
Baudin related what occurred, how could he know that the version of the
commander - at whom, after Baudin's death, he never missed an opportunity
of sneering - was merely "more or less" exact?) Even then he blundered,
for some of the things stated by him were not only contrary to fact, but
could not have been ascertained from Baudin, from Flinders, or from the
sailors.
Peron stated, for example, that Flinders said that he had been
accompanied from England by a second vessel, which had become separated
from him by a violent tempest. There had been no second vessel, and
Flinders could have made no such assertion. Again, Peron wrote that
Flinders said that, hindered by contrary winds, he had not been able to
penetrate behind the islands of St. Peter and St. Francis, in Nuyts
Archipelago. Flinders made no such absurd statement. He had followed the
coast behind those islands with the utmost particularity. His track, with
soundings, is shown on his large chart of the section.* (* On this
statement the Quarterly reviewer of 1810 bluntly wrote: "Now, we will
venture not only to assert that all this is a direct falsehood (for we
have seen both the journal and charts of Captain Flinders, which are
fortunately arrived safe in this country), but also to pledge ourselves
that no such observations are to be found either in Captain Baudin's
journal or in the logbook of the Geographe." Quarterly Review 4 52.
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