With Such An Indication, I Was Led To Believe In The
Possibility Of Finding The Place; And Though The Hope
Of restoring La
Perouse or any of his companions to their country and friends could not,
after so many years,
Be rationally entertained, yet to gain some
knowledge of their fate would do away with the pain of suspense, and it
might not be too late to retrieve some documents of their discoveries.*
(* Flinders, Voyage 2 48.) The vigilance of Flinders to this end
indicates the fascination which the mysterious fate of the French mariner
had for seamen, until doubts were finally set at rest in 1827, when one
of the East India Company's ships, under Captain Dillon, found at
Manicolo, in the New Hebrides, traces of the wreckage of the vessels of
La Perouse. Native tradition enabled the history of the end of the
expedition to be ascertained. The French ships, on a dark and stormy
night, were both driven on the reef, and soon pounded to match-wood. A
few of the sailors got ashore, but most were drowned; and the bulk of the
remainder were lost in an unsuccessful attempt to make for civilised
regions from the coral isolation of Manicolo. A monument to the memory of
the gallant La Perouse, on the coast a few miles from Sydney, now fronts
the Pacific whose winds wafted him to his doom, and beneath whose waters
he found his grave.
The next link in the chain was furnished by the expedition commanded by
Bruni Dentrecasteaux, who, while the hurricane of the Revolution was
raging, was despatched (1791) to search for La Perouse. He made important
discoveries on his own account,* (* Voyage de Dentrecasteaux, redige par
M. de Rossel, Paris 1808; Labillardiere, Relation du Voyage a la
Recherche de la Perouse, Paris 1800.) both on the mainland of Australia
and in Tasmania; and though he found no trace of his predecessor, his own
name is honourably remembered among the eminent navigators who did
original work in Australasia. It was Dentrecasteaux's hydrographer,
Beautemps Beaupre, whose charting of part of the southern coast of
Australia was so highly praised by Flinders.
The expeditions thus enumerated were all despatched before the era of
Napoleon, and appreciation of their objects cannot therefore be
complicated by doubts as to his Machiavellian designs. Bougainville's
voyage, and that of Marion-Dufresne, were promoted under Louis XV, that
of La Perouse under Louis XVI, and Dentrecasteaux's under the
Revolutionary Assembly. Each was an expedition of discovery.
Next came the expedition commanded by Nicolas Baudin, with which we are
mainly concerned, and which was despatched under the Consulate. It will
presently be demonstrated that it did not differ in purpose from its
predecessors, and that there is nothing to show that in authorising it
Bonaparte had any other object than that professed. But before pursuing
that subject, let it be made clear that French exploring expeditions to
the South Seas were continued after the final overthrow of the Empire.
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