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.
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