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.
In 1817, while Napoleon was mewed up in St. Helena, and a Bourbon once
more occupied the throne of France as Louis XVIII, the ships Uranie and
Physicienne were sent out under the command of Captain Louis de
Freycinet, the cartographer of Baudin's expedition.* (* Voyage autour du
Monde, entrepris par ordre du Roi, par Louis de Freycinet, Paris 1827.)
They visited some of the scenes of former French exploits, and Freycinet
took advantage of his position on the west coast to pull down and
appropriate for the French Academy of Inscriptions the oldest memorial of
European presence in Australia. That is to say, he took the plate put up
by the Dutchman Vlaming in 1697, in place of that erected in 1616 by Dirk
Haticks on the island bearing the name of "Dirk Hartog," to commemorate
his visit in the ship Eendraght of Amsterdam.* (* Ibid 1 449.) Freycinet
had desired to take the plate when he was an officer on Le Naturaliste in
July 1801, but Captain Hamelin, the commander, would not permit it to be
disturbed.
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