512 



THE DISCOVERY OF AUSTRALIA 



Baudin 



coast, 

 March 1802. 



till July that he was permitted to sail. It was a race, and 

 Baudin had nine months' start. If Flinders had enjoyed 

 half that start there would have been nothing for Baudin 

 to discover in the unknown coast. 



But Baudin was a bad racer ; in fact he did not race 

 at all. He made very slow passage to Mauritius, stayed 

 there forty days, and only reached Cape Leeuwin in May 

 1 80 1, two hundred and twenty days after he had sailed 

 from France. Then, as winter was coming, he thought 

 it best to go North, so he sailed up the Western coast, 

 making no important discoveries the most interesting 

 discovery was Vlamingh's " flattened pewter dish " l and 

 then made for Timor. Here he stayed for , fifty-six days 

 between the l8th of August and the I3th of November, and 

 then sailed for Dentrecasteaux Channel in South Tasmania. 

 Here he stayed " picking up shells and catching butter- 

 flies," one of his officers complained from January to March 

 1802, when he made for Bass's Strait, and at last began 

 the exploration of the unknown coast, or rather the coast 

 which had been unknown before Grant had discovered 

 part of it in December 1800 and Murray another part 

 of it in January 1802. What remained undiscovered, 

 when Baudin entered the Eastern side of Bass's Strait 

 in March 1802, was the region between the Dutch discovery 

 in l62 7 and Grant's discovery of 1800. Baudin, however, 

 had not heard of the discoveries of Grant and Murray, 

 and hig belief was that he still had opportunity to be 



discoverer of the whole region from Western Port to 

 Nuytsland. He commenced his discoveries, then, from 

 Western Port, passed Port Phillip without seeing it, 2 

 followed the coast already discovered by Grant from 

 Cape Otway to Cape Banks, sailed further Westward 

 along fifty leagues of a particularly desolate shore, which, 

 he said, scarcely deserved to be visited, 3 and then, on the 



1 Peron, p. 194. See above, pp. 228, 229. 



2 See Scott's elaborate and convincing discussion of this question, 

 Scott's Terre Napoleon, p. 48 et seq. 



3 Cf . Baudin's letter in Scott's article in the Victorian Historical 

 Magazine, Dec. 1912, p. 171, 



