Upon Both Charts,
The Whole Of Southern Australia, From Wilson's Promontory To Cape Adieu
In The Bight, Was Styled Terre Napoleon.
To nearly every cape, bay,
island, peninsula, strait, and gulf in this extensive region was affixed
a name, in most cases, though not in all, that of some Frenchman of
eminence during the revolutionary and Napoleonic period.
The Spencer's
Gulf and St. Vincent's Gulf, which Flinders had discovered, were
respectively named Golfe Bonaparte and Golfe Josephine.* (* The latter
was named "in honour of our august Empress," said Peron. It was a pretty
piece of courtiership; but unfortunately Napoleon's nuptial arrangements
were in a state of flux, and when the trenchant Quarterly reviewer of
1810 came to discuss the work, the place of Josephine was occupied by
Marie Louise. The reviewer saucily suggested: "Bonaparte has since
changed it for Louisa's Gulf.") The large island which Flinders had
pointed out to Baudin, and which he informed that officer he had named
Kangaroo Island, became Ile Decres. The Yorke's Peninsula of Flinders was
styled Presqu'Ile Cambaceres; his Investigator Strait became Detroit de
Lacepede; and his Backstairs Passage, Detroit de Colbert. To-day the
Terre Napoleon charts look like a partial index to the Pantheon and Pere
Lachaise. Laplace, Buffon, Volney, Maupertuis, Montaigne, Lannes, Pascal,
Talleyrand, Berthier, Lafayette, Descartes, Racine, Moliere, Bernadotte,
Lafontein, Condillac, Bossuet, Colbert, Rabelais, D'Alembert, Sully,
Bayard, Fenelon, Voltaire,* (* Voltaire's name is on the Terre Napoleon
sectional chart, but it seems to have been crowded out of the large Carte
Generale. As there is no actual bay in Spencer's Gulf to correspond with
the Baie Voltaire shown on the Terre Napoleon chart, the omission does
not matter much. But one would have liked to have Voltaire's opinion on
the subject of his exclusion.) Jeanne d'Arc, L'Hopital, Massena, Turenne,
Jussieu, Murat - soldiers, statesmen, scientists, authors, philosophers,
adorn with their memorable names these most un-Gallic shores. The
Bonaparte family was pleasantly provided for. Thus we find the Isles
Jerome, Baie Louis and Baie Hortense (after Josephine's daughter).
Outside the Terre Napoleon region, on the north coast, the name Golfe
Joseph Bonaparte bespoke geographical immortality for another member of
the family. But we miss Rousseau and Turgot, deplore the absence of
Corneille and La Bruyere, and feel that at least a sand-bank or two might
have been found for Quesnay and the economists, if only as a set-off
against the disparagement of Burke.
Yet it is on the whole an illustrious company, representative of the best
and brightest in French intellect and character. When the brave old
Spanish navigators of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries discovered
a new port or cape, they commonly gave it the name of the saint on whose
day in the calendar it was found; and the map of Central and South
America is a memorial at once of their piety and their enterprise. But
Baudin's expedition having no such guide - Comte's Positivist Calendar, if
not of later date, would have been useful - their selection of names was
quite an original effort.
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