of the ancient Norman city whose name he bore as his own. CHAPTER 6. THE MOTIVES OF BONAPARTE. Did Bonaparte desire to establish French colonial dominions in Australia? The case stated. We will now turn to quite another aspect of the Terre Napoleon story, and one which to many readers will be more fruitful in interest. An investigation of the work of Baudin's expedition on the particular stretch of coast to which was applied the name of the most potent personage in modern history has necessarily demanded close application to geographical details, and a minute scrutiny of claims and occurrences. We enter into a wider historical realm when we begin to consider the motives which led Bonaparte to despatch the expedition of 1800 to 1804. Here we are no longer confined to shores which, at the time when we are concerned with them, were the abode of desolation and the nursery of a solitude uninterrupted for untallied ages, save by the screams of innumerable sea-birds, or, occasionally, here and there, by the corroboree cries of naked savages, whose kitchen-middens, feet thick with shells, still betray the places where they feasted. We wish to know why Bonaparte, who had overturned the Directory by the audacity of Brumaire and hoisted himself into the dominating position of First Consul in the year before Le Geographe and Le Naturaliste were sent to the South Seas, authorised the undertaking of that enterprise. Was it what it purported to be, an expedition of exploration, or was it a move in a cunning game of state-craft by a player whose board, as some would have us believe, was the whole planet? Had Bonaparte, so soon after ascending to supremacy in the Government of France, already conceived the dazzling dream of a vast world-empire acknowledging his sway, and was this a step towards the achievement of it? If not that, was he desirous by this means of striking a blow at the prestige of Great Britain, whose hero Nelson had smashed his fleet at the Nile two years before? Or had he ideals in the direction of establishing French colonial dominions in southern latitudes, and did he desire to obtain accurate information as to where the tricolour might most advantageously be planted? It ought to be possible, out of the copious store of available material relative to Napoleon's era, to form a sound opinion on this fascinating subject. But we had better resolve to have the material before we do formulate a conclusion, and not jump to one regardless of evidence, or the lack of it.