Plate 4 In Flinders' Atlas, For Example.) As
"Discovered By Captain Baudin, 1802." The French On Their Charts,
However, Made Not The Slightest Reference To The Discoveries Of Either
Flinders Or Grant.
The true Terre Napoleon, therefore, if the name were to survive at all,
would be from a point north-west of Cape Banks in the state of South
Australia, to the mouth of the river Murray in Encounter Bay.
The names
marked on a modern map indicate the sort of country that it is in the
main. Chinaman's Wells, M'Grath's Flat, Salt Creek, Martin's Washpool,
Jim Crow's Flat, and Tilley's Swamp are examples. They are not
noble-sounding designations to inscribe at the back of coasts once
dignified by the name of the greatest figure in modern history. It is
rather to be regretted that the name Terre Napoleon has slipped off
modern maps. It is historically interesting. When Eric the Red, as the
Saga tells us, discovered Greenland, he so called it because "men would
be the more readily persuaded thither if the land had a good name." Most
will agree that Terre Napoleon sounds a bit better than Pipe Clay Plain
or Willow Swamp, which are other choice flowers in the same garden.* (*
These "virginal chaste names" are taken from the map of South Australia,
by the Surveyor-General of that State, 1892.)
There is no evidence to warrant the belief that Napoleon had anything
whatever to do with affixing his name to the territory to which it was
applied, or with the nomenclature of the features of the coast.
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