Peron spoke of savage peoples, not with less sympathy but with a sympathy grounded on knowledge; and he wasted no words about the "injustice" of occupying lands which the aboriginal only used in the sense that lands are "used" by rabbits and dingoes. Peron's appreciation of well-observed facts gave him some political insight in the philosophical sense, and he comprehended the development of which the country was capable. Could Baudin's shade visit to-day the shores that he traversed more than a century ago, he would surely acknowledge that orchards of ripening fruit, miles of golden grain, millions of white fleeces, the cattle of a thousand hills, great cities throbbing with immense energies, and a commerce of ever augmenting vastness, ministering to the happiness of free and prosperous populations, are, in the large ledger of humanity, an abundant compensation for the disappearance of the few companies of naked savages whom, when civilisation once invaded their ancestral haunts, neither the agencies of government nor philanthropy could save from the processes of decay. The account given by Peron of the flag-raising incident was quite accurate, but he presented his readers with a wholly untrue version of Governor King's letter to Baudin. With the document before us, we must doubt whether Peron ever saw it. The passage printed by him in quotation marks bears hardly a resemblance to the courteous terms of the actual letter, which did not contain any such threat as that "all these countries form an integral part of the British Empire," and "it will be my duty to oppose by every means in my power the execution of the design you are supposed to have in view." It seems probable that Peron heard the letter read, or its contents summarised, but, in writing, mixed up the substance of it with blustering language which may have been used by Acting-Lieutenant Robbins.* (* Backhouse Walker also held this view. Early Tasmania page 18.) At all events, King used no word of menace, while conveying plainly that the establishment of a French settlement would require "explanation."