Terre Napoleón; a History of French Explorations and Projects in AustraliaScott, Ernest, Sir
History
Terre Napoleón; a History of French Explorations and Projects in Australia
Scott, Ernest, Sir
Australia -- Discovery and exploration; Baudin, Nicolas, 1754-1803; Napoleon I, Emperor of the French, 1769-1821
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."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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