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.
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