In Other Particulars, At All Events As Far As Relates To The Terre Napoleon Coasts, The French Charts Are Quite Unlike Those Of Flinders.

But contemporaries - knowing that Flinders' charts had been taken from him by Decaen, and that he had been held

In captivity until the French could finish their work, and then, comparing his charts with Freycinet's, finding that parts of the coasts discovered by the English captain were well represented on the French charts, while other parts of the outline of Terra Australis were badly done or inadequate - not unnaturally drew the inference that the well-drawn sections were based upon drawings improperly acquired. If the chain of evidence was not complete, the violent racial animosities then prevalent moulded the missing links in the fervent heat of imagination.

But it is quite easy to account for the superior cartography of the two gulfs and Kangaroo Island. Le Geographe visited this region twice. In April 1802, after meeting Flinders in Encounter Bay, Baudin sailed west, and endeavoured to penetrate the two gulfs. But his corvette drew too much water to permit him to go far, and he determined to give up the attempt, and to devote "une seconde campagne" to "la reconnaissance complete de ces deux grands enfoncements."* (* Voyage de Decouvertes 3 11.) In Sydney, Governor King permitted him to purchase a small locally constructed vessel of light draught - called the Casuarina, because she was built of she-oak - with which to explore rivers and shallow waters. The command of this boat was entrusted to Lieutenant Louis de Freycinet, the future cartographer and part historian of the expedition; and the charts of the two gulfs and Kangaroo Island were made by, or under the superintendence of, that officer. Freycinet was not with Le Geographe on her first cruise in these waters, and was not responsible for the original drawings upon which his charts of the Terre Napoleon coasts eastward of Cape Jervis were founded. But the fact that he surveyed the gulfs and Kangaroo Island on the second visit, in 1803, is quite sufficient to account for the improved cartography of this region in the French atlas. Whatever we may think of the part played by Freycinet in relation to Flinders and the history of the expedition, his professional ability was of a high character. All the charting work done by him, when he had not to depend upon the rough drawings of inferior men, was very good. His interest in scientific navigation was deep, and when, in 1817, he was given the command of a fresh French expedition, consisting of the Uranie and the Physicienne, the large folio atlas produced by him indicated that he had studied the technicalities of his profession to excellent purpose.

The superiority of the work done by Baudin's expedition in the vicinity of the two gulfs, then, was not due to any fraudulent use of Flinders' material, but simply to the fact that there was a competent officer in charge of it at that time; and there is nothing on the charts for which Freycinet was personally responsible to justify the belief that his work claiming to be original was not genuinely his own. When, in 1824, he published a second edition of the Voyage de Decouvertes aux Terres Australes,* (* In octavo volumes; the first edition was in quarto.) he repudiated with quiet dignity the suggestion that the work of the English navigator had been plagiarised.* (* "C'est assez," he wrote, "repousser des accusations odieuses et envenimees, fondees sur des idees chimeriques, avec absence de toute espece de preuve. Le temps, qui calme les passions humaines et permet toujours a la verite de reprendre ses droits, fera justice d'accusations concues avec legerete et soutenues avec inconvenance. Peron et Flinders sont morts; l'un et l'autre ont des titres certains a notre estime, a notre admiration; ils vivront, ainsi que leurs travaux, dans la memoire des hommes, et les nuages que je cherche a dissiper auront disparu sans retour" (volume 1 Preface page 11). One cannot but be touched by that appeal; but at the same time it is to be observed that in the very preface in which he made it, Freycinet did far less than justice to the work of Flinders.) Except for the Port Phillip part of the work, we might fairly say that history has commonly done him and his confreres a serious injustice.

But we have seen that, although Port Phillip was included in the French charts, and inside soundings were actually shown, neither the port nor the entrance was seen by the expedition. How was that information obtained?

Le Geographe and Le Naturaliste lay in Sydney harbour from June 20 to November 18, 1802, their afflicted crews receiving medical treatment, and their officers enjoying the hospitality of Governor King. Flinders and Lieutenant John Murray, who discovered Port Phillip, were both there during part of the same time. It was then that the French learnt of the existence of the great harbour of which Baudin was ignorant when he met Flinders in Encounter Bay; and it is highly probable that by some means they obtained a copy of the chart which they saw.

Grounds for stating that that is a probability will be advanced a little later. But let us first see how the drawing of Port Phillip that does appear on the Terre Napoleon charts got there.

It was taken, as Freycinet acknowledged,* (* Voyage de Decouvertes 3 430.) "from a manuscript chart prepared on the English ship Armiston, in 1804. In 1806 the French frigate La Piedmontoise captured the British ship Fame. Amongst the papers found on board was this manuscript chart. It so happened that one of the officers of La Piedmontoise was Lieutenant Charles Baudin des Ardennes, who had been a junior officer on Le Naturaliste from 1800 to 1804. (He was no relative of Captain Baudin. The family of Baudin des Ardennes was very well known in France; and this officer became a distinguished French admiral.) He took possession of the manuscript, and handed it over to Freycinet, who made use of it in preparing his charts.

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