In Every Part Of The World There Are Lands Named After The Rulers Of The Nations To Which The Discoverers Or Founders Belonged.

Raleigh named Virginia "from the maiden Queen"; the two Carolinas preserve the name of the amorous monarch who granted

The original charter of colonisation "out of a Pious and good intention for ye propogacion of ye Christian faith amongst ye Barbarous and Ignorant Indians, ye Inlargement of his Empire and Dominions, and Inriching of his Subjects"; and two states of Australia commemorate by their names the great Queen who occupied the British throne when they were founded. There would have been nothing unusual or improper in the action of the French in styling the country from Wilson's Promontory to Cape Adieu "Terre Napoleon," except that they did not discover it. What they did excites a feeling akin to derision, because it bore the character of "jumping a claim," to use an Australian mining phrase.

Nor is it to be inferred that affixing the name was intended to assert possession. An examination of the large chart of Australia shows that the whole of the coast-line, except this particular stretch, was previously named. There was Terre de Nuyts on the south-west; Terre de Leeuwin, Terre d'Endrels, Terre d'Endracht were on the west; Terre de Witt on the north-west; Terre d'Arnheim and Terre de Carpentarie on the north. New South Wales was marked as occupying the whole of the east. The styling of the freshly discovered south Terre Napoleon was a mere piece of courtiership. If Napoleon had ever been strong enough to strike a blow at the British in Australia, the probabilities are that he would have endeavoured to oust them from New South Wales, and would not have troubled himself very much about the coasts that were named after him. It was his way to strike at the heart of his enemy, and the heart of British settlement in Australia was located at Port Jackson.

It has been represented in one of the best books in English on the Napoleonic period,* (* Dr. Holland Rose's Life of Napoleon 1 381.) that "the names given by Flinders on the coasts of Western and South Australia, have been retained owing to the priority of his investigation, but the French names have been kept up on the coast between the mouth of the Murray and Bass Straits for the same reason." That statement, however, is very much too wide. Capes Patton, Otway, Nelson, Bridgewater, Northumberland and Banks, Portland Bay and Julia Percy Island, all lie between the points mentioned, and all of them were named by Grant, who first discovered them and marked them on his chart. None of the French names is properly in present employment east of Cape Buffon; for their Cap Boufflers, which is marked on a few maps, is really the Cape Banks of Grant. The only names freshly applied by Baudin to natural features of the mainland on the Terre Napoleon charts, and which are in current use, are Cape Buffon, Cape Lannes, Rivoli Bay, Cape Jaffa, Cape Rabelais, Cape Dombey, Guichen Bay, Cape Bernoulli, Lacepede Bay, and Cape Morard de Galles.

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