Unfortunately, The "Discoveries" To Which The
Names Were Applied Were Not Original.
Two facts are incontrovertible:
(1) that Flinders had discovered and
charted the whole of the south coast of Australia from Fowler Bay to
Encounter Bay - except the south of Kangaroo Island, which is represented
by a dotted line on his charts - before he met Le Geographe on April 8,
1802; and (2) that the French officers knew that he had done so. Flinders
explained to Baudin the discoveries which he had made when they met in
Encounter Bay, and afterwards when the Investigator and the French ships
lay together in Port Jackson he showed him one of his finished charts to
illustrate what he had done. "So far from any prior title being set up at
that time to Kangaroo Island and the parts westward," wrote Flinders,
"the officers of the Geographe always spoke of them as belonging to the
Investigator."
The French names would appear to have been applied by Baudin, if
Freycinet is to be believed; for he uses the phrase "les nommes que
Baudin a donnes."* (* Voyage de Decouvertes 2 Preface page 23.) But when
Freycinet wrote those words Baudin was dead, and the publication of the
charts had evoked much indignation on account of the gross wrong done to
Flinders. In one or two cases the names were certainly not Baudin's, as
will be made clear in a later chapter.* (* Take, for instance, Ile
Decres, the name given to Kangaroo Island. Decres did not become Minister
for the Navy till October 3, 1801. Baudin was then at sea, and probably
never knew anything about Decres' accession to office. It is pretty well
certain that the name was not given to the island until after the return
of the expedition, when Baudin was dead.) Certainly Baudin was in no
sense responsible for the publication. Peron and Freycinet were the men
who put their names to the charts and volumes; and they were by no means
exculpated by the suggestion that Baudin devised a nomenclature
calculated to deprive Flinders of the credit that he had won. Both Peron
and Freycinet knew, too, when they issued their volume and atlas, that
Flinders was being held in captivity in Mauritius; and the dead captain
was certainly not guilty of the meanness and mendacity of hurrying
forward the issue of books that pretended to discoveries never made,
while the real discoverer was prevented from asserting his own rightful
claims.
That the publication was hurried forward as soon as Napoleon's government
gave the order to print, is evident from the incompleteness of the atlas
of 1807. It contained a table of charts - "Tableau General des planches
qui composent l'atlas historique" - which were not inserted in the book;
and in one of the four copies of this rare volume which the author has
been able to examine, the previous owner, or the bookseller from whom it
was purchased, collating the contents with the table, had pencilled in
the margin, "All wanting," being under the impression that the copy was
imperfect.
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