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Terre Napoleon

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The passage may be compared with Peron's own observations on the same
subject, given in Chapter 9. A more erroneous view of the effects of
convict colonisation could hardly have been conveyed; but the paragraph
may have been written to catch the eye of Napoleon, who was a strong
believer in transportation as a remedial punishment for serious crime,
and had spoken in favour of it in the Council of State during the
discussions on the Civil Code.* (* See Thibaudeau, Memoires sur le
Consulat, English edition, translated by G.K. Fortescue, LL.D., London
1908 page 180. Transportation, said Napoleon, "is in accord with public
opinion, and is prescribed by humane considerations. The need for it is
so obvious that we should provide for it at once in the Civil Code. We
have now in our prisons six thousand persons who are doing nothing, who
cost a great deal of money, and who are always escaping. There are thirty
to forty highwaymen in the south who are ready to surrender to justice on
condition that they are transported. Certainly we ought to settle the
question now, while we have it in our minds. Transportation is
imprisonment, certainly, but in a cell more than thirty feet square." The
highwaymen mentioned by Bonaparte must have been remarkable persons. It
was so like highwaymen to wish to be arrested! Perhaps there were also
birds in the south who were willing to be caught on condition that salt
was put on their tails.)

In addition to these representations, Peron was accorded an interview
with the Minister of Marine, Decres, when, supported by Fleurieu and
other members of the Institute, he explained what the expedition had
done, and exhibited specimens of his collections and of Lesueur's
drawings. Champagny, the Minister of the Interior, was also induced to
listen to the eloquent pleading of the naturalist. As a result, the
Government resolved to publish; and in 1807 appeared the first volume of
the text, together with a thin folio atlas containing a number of
beautiful drawings and two charts. The books were issued under the
superscription, "par ordre de S.M. L'Empereur et Roi." On Sunday, January
12, 1808--"apres la messe"--Peron, who was accompanied by Lesueur, one of
the artists, had the honour of being admitted to the presence of the
Emperor, and presented him with a copy of the work.* (* Moniteur, January
13, 1808.) The naturalist became somewhat of a favourite with the Empress
Josephine, who on several occasions sent a carriage to his lodgings to
take him to Malmaison; and she treated him "as a good mother would have
treated a dear son."* (* Girard, F. Peron page 50.) He gave to her a pair
of black swans from Australia, and the Empress generously discharged
debts which he had incurred in acquiring part of his collection.

Peron died of a throat disease on December 14, 1810, just seventeen days
after the liberated Flinders reached England. He was buried at Cerilly,
where a monument, designed by Lesueur, marks his grave. At the time of
his death he had not quite finished writing the second volume of the
Voyage de Decouvertes. The conclusion of the work was therefore entrusted
to Louis de Freycinet, who had already been commissioned to produce the
atlas of charts.

Of Peron's personal character, and of the value of his scientific work,
nothing but high praise can be written. He was but a young man when he
died. Had he lived, we cannot doubt that he would have filled an
important place among French men of science, for his diligence was
coupled with insight, and his love of research was as deep as his
aptitude for it was keen. A pleasant picture of the man was penned by
Kerandren, who had been one of the surgeons on the expedition to
Australia. "Peron," he said* (* Moniteur, January 24, 1811. The Moniteur
of June 7, 1812, also contained a eulogy on Peron delivered before the
Societe Medicale d'emulation de Paris, by A.J.B. Louis.), "carried upon
his face the expression of kindliness and sensibility. The fervour of his
mind, the vivacity of his character, were tempered by the extreme
goodness of his heart. He made himself useful to most of those who were
the companions of his voyage. There was joined to his confidence in his
own ability, a great modesty. He was so natural--I would even say so
candid--that it was impossible to resist the charm of his manners and his
conversation."

Apart from his authorship of the first and part of the second volume of
the Voyage de Decouvertes, Peron wrote a number of short "memoires sur
divers sujets," suggested to his mind by observations made during the
voyage. One of the most valuable of these, from a scientific point of
view, was an essay upon the causes of phosphorescence in the sea,
frequently observed in tropical and subtropical regions, but occasionally
in European waters.*

(* Crabbe described it admirably in The Borough (9 103):

"And now your view upon the ocean turn,
And there the splendour of the waves discern;
Cast but a stone, or strike them with an oar,
And you shall flames within the deep explore;
Or scoop the stream phosphoric as you stand,
And the cold flames shall flash along your hand;
When, lost in wonder, you shall walk and gaze
On weeds that sparkle and on waves that blaze.)

Although Peron was not the first naturalist to explain that this aspect
of floating fire given to the waves was due to the presence of multitudes
of living organisms, he was the first naturalist to describe their
structure and functional processes.* (* Phipson on Phosphorescence (1862)
page 113, mentions that as early as 1749 and 1750, Vianetti and
Grixellini, two Venetians, discovered in the waters of the Adriatic
quantities of luminous animalculae; and the true cause of the phenomena
must have occurred to many of those who witnessed it, though groundless
and absurd theories were current. Of the creature discovered and
described by Peron, Phipson says that it is "one of the most curious of
animals. It belongs to the tribe of Tunicata. Each individual resembles a
minute cylinder of glowing phosphorus. Sometimes they are seen adhering
together in such prodigious numbers that the ocean appears as if covered
with an enormous mass of shining phosphorus or molten lava." Professor
Moseley investigated the Pyrosoma while with the Challenger expedition.
He wrote: "A giant Pyrosoma was caught by us in the deep-sea trawl. It
was like a great sac, with its walls of jelly about an inch in thickness.
It was four feet long and ten inches in diameter. When a Pyrosoma is
stimulated by having its surface touched, the phosphorescent light breaks
out just at the spot stimulated, and then spreads over the surface of the
colony to the surrounding animals. I wrote my name with my finger on the
surface of the giant Pyrosoma as it lay on deck, and my name came out in
a few seconds in letters of fire." The author owes this last reference to
an excellent paper on "Phosphorescence in Plants and Animals," by Miss
Freda Bage, M.Sc., printed in the Victorian Naturalist, 21 page 100
November 1904.) His treatise on the Pyrosoma atlanticum is an extremely
interesting example of his scientific work. The creature is weighed and
measured; its appearance is described; then it is carefully taken to
pieces and its structure and internal organisation are minutely detailed;
next there is an account of its functions, and an explanation of how the
phosphorescent appearance is produced; and finally its mode of life,
nutrition, and system of generation are dealt with. Peron collects a
number of specimens, places them in a vessel filled with sea-water, and
observes how, at rhythmic intervals, the creature alternately contracts
and dilates in a fashion analogous to the art of breathing among more
highly organised animals; and he notices that the phosphorescence appears
and disappears with these movements, being most fully displayed when the
creature's body is most contracted, and disappearing during the moments
of most complete expansion. Here we have careful examination and
observation, study of the organism in its native habitat, anatomical
dissection, and experiment--a piece of biological work exceedingly well
done. Cuvier would have read the piece with satisfaction in his pupil.

Other Memoires by Peron, on the temperature of the sea on the surface and
at measured depths; on the zoology of the Austral regions; on dysentery
in hot countries and the medicinal use of the betel-nut; on sea animals,
such as seals; and on the art of maintaining live animals in zoological
collections, were valuable; and the subjects on which he wrote are
mentioned as indicating the range of his scientific interests. One of his
pieces of work which, naturally, aroused much interest in Europe, was an
extremely curious investigation relative to the physiological
peculiarities of females of the Bushman tribes in South Africa, where
Peron made an inland journey for the purpose.* (* There is a technical
note on this delicate subject in Girard's F. Peron, Naturaliste, Voyageur
aux Terres Australes (Paris, 1857); a book which also gives a good
summary of Peron's scientific work.)

When he died, Peron had not had time to apply himself adequately to the
enormous mass of material that he had collected. His fertile and curious
mind, we cannot doubt, would have enriched the scientific literature of
France with many other monographs. The deaths at sea of Bernier and
Deleuze also deprived the records of the expedition of contributions
which they would have made on their special lines of research.
Collections of specimens and piles of memoranda, uninformed by the
intelligence of those to whom their meaning is most apparent, are a
barren result.

Peron's biological work was done in accordance with the spirit and
principles of Cuvier, who stood at the head of European savants in his
own field. "Trained for four years in Cuvier's school," wrote the
naturalist, "I had for guide not only his method and his principles, but
manuscript instructions that he had had the goodness to write for me on
my departure from Europe." Cuvier insisted on the importance of structure
and function; "to name well you must know well." The part played by the
creature in its own share of the world, its nervous organisation, its
life as involved in its form, were essentials upon which he laid stress
in his teaching; and he imparted to those who came under his influence a
breadth of view, a feeling for the unity of nature, that is quite modern,
and has governed all the greatest of his successors. "Not only is each
being an organism, the whole universe is one, but many million times more
complicated; and that which the anatomist does for a single animal--for
the microcosm--the naturalist is to do for the macrocosm, for the
universal animal, for the play of this immense aggregation of partial
organisms." Detailed research, coupled with an outlook on the whole realm
of nature--that was the essential principle of Cuvier's science; and it
is because we can recognise in Peron a man who had profitably sat at the
feet of the great master, that his death before he had applied his zeal
to the material collected with so much labour is the more deeply to be
regretted.

The few paragraphs in which Peron expressed his views regarding the
modification of species may be quoted. It has to be remembered that they
were written in the early years of the nineteenth century, when ideas on
this subject were in a state of uncertainty rather than of transition,
and more than half a century before Darwin gave an entirely new direction
to thought by publishing his great hypothesis. Cuvier at this time
believed in the fixity of species--constancy in the type with
modification in the form of individuals; but his opinions underwent some
amount of change in the latter part of his career. The point argued with
such gravity, and the conclusion which Peron stresses with the
impressiveness of italics, are not such as a naturalist nowadays would
think it worth while to elaborate, namely, that organisms having a
general structural similarity are modified by climate and environment. It
would not require a voyage to another hemisphere to convince a schoolboy
of that truth nowadays. But the paragraphs have a certain historical
value, for they put what was evidently an important idea to an
accomplished naturalist a century ago. They present us, in that aspect,
with an interesting bit of pre-Darwinian generalisation.

"Before natural history had acquired a strict and appropriate language of
its own," wrote Peron,* (* Voyage de Decouvertes, 1824 edition 3 243.)
"when its methods were defective and incomplete, travellers and
naturalists confused under one name, in imitation of each other, so to
speak, animals which were essentially different. There is no class of the
animal kingdom which, in the actual state of things, does not include
several orbicular species; that is to say, several species which are in
some degree common to all parts of the globe, however they may be
modified by geographical and climatic conditions. Other species, although
confined to certain latitudes, are, however, usually regarded as common
to all climates, and to all seas comprised within these latitudes. The
existence of these last animals is regarded as being independent of
latitude. To confine ourselves to marine species, one sees it constantly
repeated in books of the most estimable character, that the great whale
(Balaena mysticetus, Linn.) is found equally amidst the frozen waters of
Spitzbergen and in the Antarctic seas; that the sharks and seals of
various kinds are found in equally innumerable tribes in seas the
farthest apart in the two hemispheres; that the turtle and the tortoise
inhabit indifferently the Atlantic, the Indian, and the great equinoctial
oceans.

"Were one to consult only reason and analogy, such assertions would
appear to be doubtful, as a matter of experience they are found to be
absolutely false. Let any one glance at the evidence upon which these
pretended identities rest; one will then see that they exist only in the
names, and that there is not a single WELL-KNOWN animal belonging to the
northern hemisphere, which is not specifically different from all other
animals EQUALLY WELL KNOWN in the opposite hemisphere. I have taken the
trouble to make that difficult comparison in the case of the cetacea, the
seals, etc.; I have examined many histories of voyages; I have gathered
together all the descriptions of animals; and I have recognised important
differences between the most similar of these supposedly identical
species.

"Nobody, I dare say, has collected more animals than I have done in the
southern hemisphere. I have observed and described them in their own
habitat. I have brought several thousands of kinds to Europe; they are
deposited in the Natural History Museum at Paris. Let any one compare
these numerous animals with those of our hemisphere, and the problem will
soon be resolved, not only in regard to the more perfectly organised
species, but even as to those which are simpler in structure, and which,
in that regard, it would appear, should show less variety in nature...In
all that multitude of animals from the southern hemisphere, one will
observe that there is not one which can be precisely matched in northern
seas; and one will be forced to conclude from such a reflective
examination--such an elaborate and prolonged comparison--as I have been
forced to do myself, THAT THERE IS NOT A SINGLE SPECIES OF WELL-KNOWN
ANIMALS WHICH, TRULY COSMOPOLITE, IS INDISTINGUISHABLY COMMON TO ALL
PARTS OF THE GLOBE.

"More than that--and it is in this respect above all that the
inexhaustible variety of nature shines forth--however imperfect each of
these animals may be, each has received its own distinct features. It is
to certain localities that they are fixed; it is there that they are
found to be most numerous, largest in size and most beautiful; and to the
extent that they are found most distant from the appropriate place, the
individuals degenerate and the species becomes gradually extinguished."

On the geographical side the series of causes described in preceding
pages prevented the achievement of that measure of success which the
French Government and the Institute had a right to expect. While Baudin
dallied, Flinders snatched the crown of accomplishment by his own
diligent and intelligent application to the work entrusted to him in the
proper field of activity. The French filled in the map of eastern
Tasmania, and contributed details to the knowledge of the north-west
coast of Australia; but what they did constitutes a poor set-off against
what they failed to do. The chief feature of interest, in an estimation
of the work done, is the publication of the first map of Australia which
represented the whole outline of the continent--saving defects--with any
approach to completeness. The Carte Generale of 1807 showed the world for
the first time what the form of Australia really was, with its south
coasts fairly delimited, and the island of Tasmania set in its proper
position in relation to them. But the circumstances in which this result
was effected were not such as secured any honour to the expedition, and
must, when the facts became known, have been deeply deplored by
instructed French people. Flinders was working at his own complete map of
Australia in his miserable prison at Mauritius while his splendidly won
credit was being filched from him; and it was merely the misfortune that
placed him in the power of General Decaen that debarred him from issuing
what should have been the first finished outline of the vast island which
he had been the earliest to circumnavigate. Historically the Carte
Generale is interesting, but no honour attaches to it.

Yet full praise must be given to Louis de Freycinet for the charts issued
by him. He drew them largely from material prepared by others, and much
of that material, as we have seen, was rough and poor. As a piece of
artistic workmanship, the folio of charts issued by Freycinet in 1812 was
a fine performance, and fairly earned for him the command of the
expedition entrusted to him by the Government of Louis XVIII. Before the
volume was published by the order of Napoleon, it was submitted by the
Minister of Marine to Vice-Admiral Rosily, Director-General du Depot de
la Marine. That officer's report* (* Printed in the Moniteur, January 15,
1813.) gave an account of the work which Freycinet had done not only in
the drawing but in regard to the actual engraving of the charts. "M.
Freycinet," said the Vice-Admiral, "who has done the principal part of
this work, was more capable than any one else known to us of
accomplishing such a result. It is to him that we owe the preparation of
this fine atlas. He has neglected no means of giving to it the last
degree of perfection. He has himself made the drawings of the charts and
plans, and then he has reproduced them upon the copper-plates, and has
engraved the scales of latitude and longitude by a new method perfected
by himself, and which assures the exactitude of his work. The beauty of
the engravings, and the execution of the work in general, leave nothing
to be desired, and testify to the care that he has devoted to make the
collection of charts one of the most useful of works in promoting the
progress of hydrography."

The praise thus officially bestowed upon Freycinet's work will be felt to
be deserved by any one who studies the atlas of 1812; but admiration of
the workmanship will not commit the careful student to an equally cordial
opinion concerning the completeness and accuracy of the charts as
representations of the coasts traversed by the expedition. The south
coast--the most important part, since here the field was entirely
fresh--was very faulty in outline, and in other parts where Baudin's
vessels had opportunities for doing complete work, important features
were missed. And at the back of it all there looms the shadow of Matthew
Flinders, the merit of whose own work shines out all the brighter for the
contrast.* (* A remarkable example of the way to avoid difficult
questions by ignoring them is afforded by Girard's book on Peron, which,
throughout its 278 pages, contains no reference whatever to Flinders. It
devotes forty pages to the voyage, but absolutely suppresses all
reference to the Encounter Bay incident, the imprisonment of Flinders,
and other questions concerning him. Yet Girard's book was "couronne par
la Societe d'emulation de d'Allier." There should have been some
"rosemary, that's for remembrance," in the crown.)


CHAPTER 12. CONCLUSIONS AND CONSEQUENCES.

Further consideration of Napoleon's purposes.
What Australia owes to British sea power.
Influence of the Napoleonic wars.
Fresh points relative to Napoleon's designs.
Absence of evidence.
Consequences of suspicions of French intentions.
Promotion of settlement in Tasmania.
Tardy occupation of Port Phillip.
The Swan River Settlement.
The Westernport scheme.
Lord John Russell's claim of "the Whole" of Australia for the British.
The designs of Napoleon III.
Australia the nursling of sea power.

The question of paramount interest connected with the events considered
in the foregoing pages is whether or not the expedition of 1800 to 1804
had a political purpose. It is hoped that the examination to which the
facts have been subjected has been sufficient to show that it had not. It
was promoted by an academic organisation of learned men for scientific
objects; it was not an isolated effort, but one of a series made by the
French, which had their counterpart in several expeditions despatched by
the British, for the collection of data and the solution of problems of
importance to science; its equipment and personnel showed it to be what
it professed to be; and the work it did, open to serious criticism as it
is in several aspects, indicated that purposes within the scope of the
Institute of France, and not those with which diplomacy and politics were
concerned, were kept in view throughout. So much, it is claimed, has been
demonstrated. But the whole case is not exhausted in what has been
written; and in this final chapter will be briefly set forth a sequence
of reasons which go to show that Bonaparte in 1800 had no thought of
founding a new fatherland for the French in Australasia, or of
establishing upon the great southern continent a rival settlement to that
of the British at Port Jackson.

It may legitimately be suggested that though all the French expeditions
enumerated in a previous chapter, including Baudin's, were promoted for
purposes of discovery, the rulers of France were not without hope that
profit would spring from them in the shape of rich territories or fields
for French exploitation. It is, indeed, extremely likely that such was
the case. Governments, being political organisations, are swayed chiefly
by political considerations, or at any rate are largely affected by them.
When Prince Henry the Navigator fitted out the caravels that crept
timidly down the west coast of Africa, penetrating farther and farther
into the unknown, until a new ocean and new realms at length opened upon
the view he was inspired by the ideal of spreading the Christian religion
and of gaining knowledge about the shape of the world for its own sake;
but he was none the less desirous of securing augmented wealth and
dominion for Portugal.* (* See Beazley, Henry the Navigator pages 139 to
141; and E.J. Payne, in Cambridge Modern History 1 10 to 15.) It was not
solely for faith and science that he:

"Heaven inspired,
To love of useful glory roused mankind
And in unbounded commerce mixed the world."

Isabella of Castile did not finance Columbus purely for the glory of
discovery. Luis de Santangel and Alonso de Quintanilla, who prevailed
upon her to befriend the daring Genoese, not only used the argument that
the voyage would present an opportunity of "spreading her holy religion,"
but also that it would "replenish her treasury chests."* (* Justin
Winsor, Christopher Columbus page 178.) It is as natural for the
statesman to hope for political advantage as for the man of science to
look for scientific rewards, the geographer for geographical results, the
merchant for extended scope for commerce, from any enterprise of the kind
in which the State concerns itself. It would have been a perfectly proper
aspiration on the part of French statesmen to seek for opportunities of
development in a region as yet scarcely touched by European energy. But
there is no more reason for attributing this motive to Bonaparte in 1800,
than to the Ministers of Louis XV and Louis XVI, or to the Government of
France during the Revolution: and that is the point.

It is to misinterpret the character of the Napoleon Bonaparte who ruled
the Republic in the early period of the Consulate, to suppose him
incapable of wishing to promote research for its own sake. He desired the
glory of his era to depend upon other achievements than those of war. "My
intention certainly is," he said to Thibaudeau, "to multiply the works of
peace. It may be that in the future I shall be better known by them than
by my victories." The Memoires of the shrewd observer to whom the words
were uttered, give us perhaps a more intimate acquaintance with the
Consular Bonaparte than does any other single book; and it is impossible
to study them without deriving the impression that he was at this time
far more than a great soldier. He was, faults notwithstanding, a very
noble and high-minded man. It was easy for the savants of the Institute
to show him what a fine field for enterprise there was in the South Seas;
and though there is not a shred of evidence to indicate that, in
acquiescing in the proposition, he yielded to any other impulse than that
of securing for France the glory of discovery, there may yet have been at
the back of his mind, so to speak, the idea that if good fortune attended
the effort, the French nation might profit otherwise than in repute. To
say so much, however, is not to admit that there is any justification for
thinking that the acquisition of dominion furnished a direct motive for
the expedition. If Bonaparte entertained such a notion he kept it to
himself. There is not a trace of it in his correspondence, or in the
memoirs of those who were intimate with him at this period. One cannot
say what thoughts took shape at the back of a mind like Napoleon's, nor
how far he was looking ahead in anything that he did. One can only judge
from the evidence available. On some of Flinders' charts there are dotted
lines to indicate coasts which he had not been able to explore fully. He
would not set down as a statement of fact what he had not verified.
History, too, has its dotted lines, where supposition fills up gaps for
which we have no certain information. There is no harm in them; there is
some advantage. But we had better take care that they remain dotted lines
until we can ink them over with certainty, and not mistake a possibly
wrong guess for a fact.

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