110 FFRST SETTLEMENT AT DERWEXT. 



chivalrously Englishmen can behave towards an enemy 

 ill distress, but because of the striking- contrast which the 

 aid and courtesies extended to the Frenchmen by Governor 

 King and the English colonists otter to the treatment 

 ]'linders experienced from the Governor of a French 

 C<jlony within little more than a year of the arrival of 

 Baudin's expedition at Sydney. In December, 1803, on 

 his way to England in the little Cumberland, Flinders was 

 obliged to put into Mauritius in distress ; when, in spite 

 of his safe conduct from the French Admiralty, his ship 

 was seized as a prize, he himself subjected to close 

 imi)risonment, his papers and charts confiscated, and 

 when, after three years, tardy orders for his release came 

 from France, he was detained on one pretext or another 

 until 1810, six years and a half after his seizure. In the 

 meantime the narrative of Baudin's voyage was ])ublished 

 in Paris, all mention of Fliiulers' exj)lorations being 

 sujjpressed, and the credit of his discoveries being claimed 

 by the French for themselves. In Sydney, at any rate, 

 the French officers had made no pretensions to priority of 

 discovery, for Flinders tells us that Lieut. Freycinot (the 

 joint editor of the history of the voyage), reniaiked to 

 him, in Governor King's house — " Captain, if wo had 

 not been kept so long picking uj) shells and collecting 

 butterflies at Van Diemen's Land, you would not have 

 discovered the South Coast [of New Holland] before us ;" 

 and Flinders, in Pcron's ])resence, showed ids chart to 

 IJaudin and pointed out the limits of his discovery. 

 l''lindoi-s generously acrjnits l^eron of blame in the matter, 

 aTid says that he beli(n'es his candour to have been e(pial 

 to his acknowledged abilities, and that what he wrote was 

 from overriding authority, and smote him to the heart. 

 He attributes the suppressions in Pcron's work, and his 

 own treatment, to the secret instructions of the l^'ench 

 Government, and possibly to have "been intended as the 

 forernrmer of a claim to the possession of the countries so 

 said to have been first discovered by French navigators." 



II. The FIRST Settlement at the Derwent. 



The foregoing sketch of the operations of the French 

 navigators in these waters will, I think, have made it 

 ])retty plain that the French Government entertained 

 serious designs of planting a colony at the first convenient 

 opportunity somewhere in Tasnumia, jiresumably in tlie 



