148 F1J\MK AM) AISTKALIA, 



of the early days of settlement, too, there may be valuable 

 material await in tr research. American vessels played a 

 great part in the early trade of Australasia, and in the 

 whaling and sealing which were the greatest industries of 

 those days. In the twenty years from 1792 to 1812 over 

 fifty American vessels called at Sydney, while many others 

 visited Australasian waters without going to Sydney. There 

 may be much of Australian interest in the ships' logs and 

 other records of the old New England whaling towns. Even 

 Russia is not too far afield to have possibilities. Several 

 Russian expeditions visited Australia in the early days, in- 

 cluding that of Bellingshausen, one of the greatest of Ant- 

 arctic explorers, who paid two visits to Sydney in 1820. 



THE FEAR OF FRANCE. 



France might have been a serious rival for the posses- 

 sion of Australia. To a large extent the early history of 

 Australia was shaped by the fear of French rivalry. This 

 fear caused the founding of the first settlements in Tasmania, 

 in Western Australia, and in tropical Australia. It led to 

 the sending of Collins' Expedition to Port Phillip in 1803, 

 and to the temporary settlement of Westernpcrt in 1826. 



French interest in the South Seas goes back to a date 

 nearly a century before the first British Settlement. From 

 1699 onwards projects for exploration and colonisation in 

 the far South were continually being put forward in France. 

 Two years after Cook had taken formal possession of the 

 Eastern part of Australia for Great Britain a similar cere- 

 mony was carried out on the Western Coast on behalf of 

 France. 



DE VOUTRON'S VOYAGE OF 1687. 



Just as the voyage of Cook was but the greatest of a 

 series of English voyages to the South Seas of which the 

 earlier ones are now almost forgotten, so French interests 

 in the New World of the South by no means began with 

 Marion's voyage of 1772. Take, for instance, the letter 

 w*hich de Voutron, a French sea captain, wrote to the Min- 

 ister for Marine from La Rochelle on February 10, 1699. 

 In this he offers to lead an expedition to explore, with a 

 view to colonisation, that part of the Torres Australes caTled" 

 by the Dutch New Holland. He states that he and his- 

 brother-in-law, Duquesne, had sighted this land in 1687 

 while on a voyage to Siam. They made their land fall inr 

 latitude 31 deg. south ' (a Kttle to the north of the Swan 



