But The Charts Detailed In The Table Were Not Issued With The
Book.
They were not ready, and the table stands as an eloquent indicator
of the hurry in which the publication was performed.
The first volume of
the Voyage de Decouvertes contains numerous marginal references to charts
not contained in the atlas issued with it. Readers of the book must have
been puzzled by these references,* (* As the present writer was when he
began to study the subject closely, and as the Quarterly reviewer was in
1810. He said: "The atlas is of quarto size; it contains not a single
chart nor any sketch or plan of a coast, island, bay, or harbour, though
frequent references are made to such in the margin of the printed volume"
(page 60). The reviewer should have said, "except the two cartes
generales" described on a previous page.) when they turned to the atlas
and found no charts corresponding with them. Freycinet's complete folio
volume of charts was not published till 1812, five years after the issue
of the book which they were necessary to explain. Flinders had then been
released; but it is significant that he was held in the clutches of
General Decaen, despite constant demands for his liberation, until the
preparation of the French charts was sufficiently advanced to make it
impossible for his own to be issued until theirs had been placed before
the world.
Flinders, generous in his judgments of other men even when smarting under
great grievances, put forth an excuse for Peron, suggesting that he had
acted under pressure.
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