BY THOMAS DUNBABIN, M.A. 155 



sent back without waiting to sse what had become of the 

 Gros Ventre. "A pressing incentive," says the anonymous 

 but apparently official writer, **is the necessity of forestalling 

 "the English, who, on the reports spread abroad of this dis- 

 "covery, might seek to trouble at its inception our possession 

 "of these lands of which the Commander of the Gros Ventre 

 "has probably taken possession in the name of His Majesty." 

 This refers, of course, not to Western Australia, of which 

 Saint Allouarn had actually taken possession, but to Ker- 

 guelen Land. Kerguelen asked for three good ships, stating 

 that the English were equipping four for an expedition to 

 the South Seas. After a good deal of delay he went down 

 to Kerguelen Land again, but was so buffeted by gales and 

 beset by the ice and snow of that inhospitable region that 

 he ran north to Madagascar, and then to Mauritius, and 

 reported sadly that New France "offered no resources." 

 Perhaps he would have tried the Australian coast for a 

 change, but wine and wassail at Port Louis led to trouble. 

 Eventually Kerguelen was tried by a court-martial, broken, 

 and dismissed from the Navy. A book which he wrote 

 was suppressed, and a score of years after his voyage, in 

 the days of the revolution, he v/as still seeking to make good 

 a claim to justice. There was a new Intendant at Mauritius 

 by the time of Kerguelen's second Expedition, one Maillart 

 Dumesse, and he had no sympathy with these explorations. 

 In language of a kind not unfamiliar in uur own day he 

 urged that the first consideration should be the promotion 

 of 'payable enterprises. Agriculture at Mauritius should 

 be encouraged by importing negro slaves from Mozambique 

 and cattle from Madagascar. "Our exp2dition," wrote 

 Dumesse, in complaining of Kerguelen's requisitions for sup- 

 plies, "should have no other objects than blacks and beasts 

 "(ncirs et bestiaux)." 



French activity in Australasian seas continued for many 

 years after this. It is enough to mention the great voyages 

 of La Perouse, who put into Botany Bay when Sydney was 

 a few days old, of D'Entrecasteaux and of Baudin, with later 

 voyagers like Dumont d'Urville. But Saint Allouarn was 

 the first and last to claim for France a foot of the soil of 

 Australia. 



