He
Could Not Find All The Places To Which Baudin Had Given Names.
He did his
best; but it is evidently easier to sprinkle a coast-line with the
contents of a biographical dictionary, than to fit all the names in.
The French cartography of the portions of the coast eastward of the two
gulfs was so badly done, in fact, that many of the features indicated on
the charts are mere geographical Mrs. Harrises - there "ain't no sich"
places. The coast was not surveyed at all, but was sketched roughly,
inaccurately, and out of scale; so that even the sandy stretch now known
as the Coorong, which is about as featureless as a railway embankment,
was fitted with names and drawn with corrugations as though it were as
jagged as a gigantic saw. Our respect for such names as Montesquieu and
Descartes causes us to regret that they should have been wasted on a cape
and a bay that geography knows not; and our abiding interest in the
sinister genius of Talleyrand fosters the wish that his patronymic had
been reserved for some other feature than the curve of the coast which
holds "the Rip" of Port Phillip, though in one sense he who was so wont
to "fish in troubled waters" is not inaptly associated with that boil of
sea."*
(* "Loud-voiced and reckless as the wild tide-race
That whips our harbour mouth,"
wrote Mr. Rudyard Kipling ("Song of the English") of the people of
Melbourne. It is believed that he meant to be complimentary.)
The south and west of Kangaroo Island were, however, first charted by
Baudin, and his names survive there. Flinders had marked these shores
with a dotted line on his chart, to signify that he had not surveyed
them. He intended to complete this bit of work on his return, but he was
"caught in the clutch of circumstance," and was never permitted to
return. Such names as Cape Borda, Cape Linois, Maupertuis Bay, Cape
Gautheaume, Bougainville Bay, and a few others, preserve the memory of
the French expedition on Kangaroo Island. A rock, known as Frenchman's
Rock, upon which a record of the visit was cut, also survives there.
A few months after the publication of the Terre Napoleon charts in 1807,
the truth about the matter became known. Sir Joseph Banks, who had been
kept well informed by Flinders about the work which he had performed, and
who had done all that was possible to obtain his release from Mauritius,
was influential in scientific circles throughout Europe. Fortunately, he
had ample material at his disposal. Flinders had sent home some finished
charts from Sydney, and during his imprisonment he wrote up a manuscript
journal which he succeeded in getting conveyed to England. It was this
manuscript which the Admiralty permitted to be perused by the writer of
the powerful Quarterly Review article of August 1810. The feeling of
indignation evoked by the treatment which the navigator received was
intensified when the publication of his Voyage and his charts in 1814
showed the measure of his shining merits - his thoroughness, his accuracy,
his diligence, the beauty of his drawings, the vast extent of the
entirely new work which he had done, and the manliness, gentleness,
courage, and fairness of his personal character.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 51 of 158
Words from 26314 to 26863
of 83218
