This Was The
Most Complete Map Of Australia Published Up To The Date Named.
The second
was entitled "Carte generale de la Terre Napoleon." In this case the
title was held by feathered Mercury in graceful flight, displaying the
motto "Orbis Australis dulces exuviae." An exquisite little vignette
under the title (by Lesueur) should not escape notice.
Upon both charts,
the whole of southern Australia, from Wilson's Promontory to Cape Adieu
in the Bight, was styled Terre Napoleon. To nearly every cape, bay,
island, peninsula, strait, and gulf in this extensive region was affixed
a name, in most cases, though not in all, that of some Frenchman of
eminence during the revolutionary and Napoleonic period. The Spencer's
Gulf and St. Vincent's Gulf, which Flinders had discovered, were
respectively named Golfe Bonaparte and Golfe Josephine.* (* The latter
was named "in honour of our august Empress," said Peron. It was a pretty
piece of courtiership; but unfortunately Napoleon's nuptial arrangements
were in a state of flux, and when the trenchant Quarterly reviewer of
1810 came to discuss the work, the place of Josephine was occupied by
Marie Louise. The reviewer saucily suggested: "Bonaparte has since
changed it for Louisa's Gulf.") The large island which Flinders had
pointed out to Baudin, and which he informed that officer he had named
Kangaroo Island, became Ile Decres. The Yorke's Peninsula of Flinders was
styled Presqu'Ile Cambaceres; his Investigator Strait became Detroit de
Lacepede; and his Backstairs Passage, Detroit de Colbert. To-day the
Terre Napoleon charts look like a partial index to the Pantheon and Pere
Lachaise. Laplace, Buffon, Volney, Maupertuis, Montaigne, Lannes, Pascal,
Talleyrand, Berthier, Lafayette, Descartes, Racine, Moliere, Bernadotte,
Lafontein, Condillac, Bossuet, Colbert, Rabelais, D'Alembert, Sully,
Bayard, Fenelon, Voltaire,* (* Voltaire's name is on the Terre Napoleon
sectional chart, but it seems to have been crowded out of the large Carte
Generale. As there is no actual bay in Spencer's Gulf to correspond with
the Baie Voltaire shown on the Terre Napoleon chart, the omission does
not matter much. But one would have liked to have Voltaire's opinion on
the subject of his exclusion.) Jeanne d'Arc, L'Hopital, Massena, Turenne,
Jussieu, Murat - soldiers, statesmen, scientists, authors, philosophers,
adorn with their memorable names these most un-Gallic shores. The
Bonaparte family was pleasantly provided for. Thus we find the Isles
Jerome, Baie Louis and Baie Hortense (after Josephine's daughter).
Outside the Terre Napoleon region, on the north coast, the name Golfe
Joseph Bonaparte bespoke geographical immortality for another member of
the family. But we miss Rousseau and Turgot, deplore the absence of
Corneille and La Bruyere, and feel that at least a sand-bank or two might
have been found for Quesnay and the economists, if only as a set-off
against the disparagement of Burke.
Yet it is on the whole an illustrious company, representative of the best
and brightest in French intellect and character. When the brave old
Spanish navigators of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries discovered
a new port or cape, they commonly gave it the name of the saint on whose
day in the calendar it was found; and the map of Central and South
America is a memorial at once of their piety and their enterprise. But
Baudin's expedition having no such guide - Comte's Positivist Calendar, if
not of later date, would have been useful - their selection of names was
quite an original effort. Unfortunately, the "discoveries" to which the
names were applied were not original.
Two facts are incontrovertible: (1) that Flinders had discovered and
charted the whole of the south coast of Australia from Fowler Bay to
Encounter Bay - except the south of Kangaroo Island, which is represented
by a dotted line on his charts - before he met Le Geographe on April 8,
1802; and (2) that the French officers knew that he had done so. Flinders
explained to Baudin the discoveries which he had made when they met in
Encounter Bay, and afterwards when the Investigator and the French ships
lay together in Port Jackson he showed him one of his finished charts to
illustrate what he had done. "So far from any prior title being set up at
that time to Kangaroo Island and the parts westward," wrote Flinders,
"the officers of the Geographe always spoke of them as belonging to the
Investigator."
The French names would appear to have been applied by Baudin, if
Freycinet is to be believed; for he uses the phrase "les nommes que
Baudin a donnes."* (* Voyage de Decouvertes 2 Preface page 23.) But when
Freycinet wrote those words Baudin was dead, and the publication of the
charts had evoked much indignation on account of the gross wrong done to
Flinders. In one or two cases the names were certainly not Baudin's, as
will be made clear in a later chapter.* (* Take, for instance, Ile
Decres, the name given to Kangaroo Island. Decres did not become Minister
for the Navy till October 3, 1801. Baudin was then at sea, and probably
never knew anything about Decres' accession to office. It is pretty well
certain that the name was not given to the island until after the return
of the expedition, when Baudin was dead.) Certainly Baudin was in no
sense responsible for the publication. Peron and Freycinet were the men
who put their names to the charts and volumes; and they were by no means
exculpated by the suggestion that Baudin devised a nomenclature
calculated to deprive Flinders of the credit that he had won. Both Peron
and Freycinet knew, too, when they issued their volume and atlas, that
Flinders was being held in captivity in Mauritius; and the dead captain
was certainly not guilty of the meanness and mendacity of hurrying
forward the issue of books that pretended to discoveries never made,
while the real discoverer was prevented from asserting his own rightful
claims.
That the publication was hurried forward as soon as Napoleon's government
gave the order to print, is evident from the incompleteness of the atlas
of 1807. It contained a table of charts - "Tableau General des planches
qui composent l'atlas historique" - which were not inserted in the book;
and in one of the four copies of this rare volume which the author has
been able to examine, the previous owner, or the bookseller from whom it
was purchased, collating the contents with the table, had pencilled in
the margin, "All wanting," being under the impression that the copy was
imperfect.
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