Chapter 30

Establishment of the First Empire. Reluctance of the French Government to publish a record of the expedition. Report of the Institute. The official history of the voyage authorised. Peron's scientific work. His discovery of Pyrosoma atlanticum. Other scientific memoirs. His views on the modification of species. Geographical results. Freycinet's charts.

Startling changes in the political complexion of France had occurred during the absence of the expedition. Citizen Bonaparte, who in May 1800 had concurred in the representations of the Institute that discovery in southern regions would redound to the glory of the nation, had since given rein to the conception that the glory of France meant, properly interpreted, his own.* (* It was so from the beginning of his career as Consul, according to M. Paul Brosses' interpretation of his character. "Il est deja et sera de plus en plus convaincu que travailler a sa grandeur, c'est travailler a la grandeur du pays." Consulat et Empire, 1907 page 27.) He meant to found a dynasty, and woe to those whom he regarded as standing in his way. One of the first pieces of news that those who landed from Le Geographe at Lorient on the 25th March would hear, was that just four days before, the Duc d'Enghien, son of the Duc de Bourbon, had been shot after an official examination so formal as to be no better than a mockery, for his grave had actually been dug before the inquiry commenced. When Peron and his companions reached Paris, they would hear and read of debates among the representatives of the Republic, mostly favourable to the establishment of a new hereditary Imperial dignity; and they would be in good time to take an interest in the plebiscite which, by a majority of nearly fourteen hundred to one, approved the new constitution and enacted that "Napoleon Bonaparte, now First Consul of the Republic, is Emperor of the French." They were, in short, back soon enough to witness the process--it may well have suggested to the naturalist a comparison with phenomena very familiar to him--by which the Consular-chrysalis Bonaparte became the Emperor-moth Napoleon.

It was, of course, a very busy year for those responsible to their illustrious master for the administration of departments. With a great naval war on hand, with plots frequently being formed or feared, with the wheels and levers of diplomacy to watch and manipulate, with immense changes in the machinery of Government going forward, and with the obligation of satisfying the exacting demands of a chief who was often in a rage, and always tremendously energetic, the ministers of France were not likely to have much enthusiasm to spare for maps and charts, large collections of dead birds, insects, beasts, fishes, butterflies, and plants, specimens of rocks and quantities of shells.

It is likely enough that absorption in more insistent affairs rather than a hostile feeling explains the reluctance of the French Government to authorise the publication of an official history of the voyage when such a project was first submitted. Freycinet and his colleagues learnt "with astonishment" that the authorities were unfavourable. "It was," he wrote, "as if the miseries that we had endured, and to which a great number of our companions had fallen victims, could be regarded as forming a legitimate ground of reproach against us." It is more reasonable to suppose that pressure of other business prevented Napoleon's ministers from devoting much consideration to the subject. Men who have endured hazards and hardships, and who return home after a long absence expecting to be welcomed with acclaim, are disposed to feel snubbed and sore when they find people not inclined to pay much attention to them. Remembering the banquets and the plaudits that marked the despatch of the expedition, those of its members who expected a demonstration may well have been chilled by the small amount of notice they received. But the public as well as the official mood was conceivably due rather to intense concentration upon national affairs, during a period of amazing transition, than to the prejudice which Freycinet's ruffled pride suggested. "It would be difficult to explain," he wrote, "how, during the voyage, there could have been formed concerning the expedition an opinion so unfavourable, that even before our return the decision was arrived at not to give any publicity to our works. The reception that we met with on arriving in France showed the effects of such an unjust and painful prejudice."* (* Preface to the 1824 edition of the Voyage de Decouvertes.)

When Le Naturaliste arrived at Havre in the previous year, the Moniteur* (* 14th Messidor, Revolutionary Year 10. (July 3, 1803).) gave an account of the very large collection of specimens that she brought, and spoke cordially of the work; and in the following month* (* 27th Thermidor, Revolutionary Year 11. (August 15).) Napoleon's organ published a long sketch of the course of the voyage up to the King Island stage, from particulars contained in despatches and supplied by Hamelin. The earlier arrival of Le Naturaliste had the effect, also, of taking the edge off public interest. This may be counted as one of the causes of the rather frigid reception accorded to Le Geographe.

The only fact that lends any colour to Freycinet's supposition of prejudice, is that the Moniteur article of 27th Thermidor suggested a certain unsatisfactoriness about the charts sent home by Baudin. His communications clearly led the Government to believe that he had made important discoveries on the south coast of Australia, but unfortunately the rough drawings accompanying his descriptions did not enable official experts to form an accurate opinion. He mentioned the two large gulfs, but furnished no chart of them.* (* "Cette decouverte [i.e. of the gulfs] du Capitaine Baudin est tres interessante en ce qu'elle completera la reconnaissance de la cote sud de la Nouvelle Hollande qui est due entierement a la France. On ne peut pas encore juger du degre d'exactitude avec laquelle elle a ete faite, parce que le citoyen Baudin n'a envoye qu'une partie de la carte qu'il en a dressee, et que cette carte meme n'est qu'une premiere esquisse. Il y a jointe une carte qui marque seulement sa route, avec les sondes le long de toute cette cote, et il promet d'envoyer l'autre partie de la cote par la premiere occasion qu'il trouvera." Moniteur, 27th Thermidor, Revolutionary Year 11.) The reason for that was, of course, that at the time when Le Naturaliste left for France Baudin had not penetrated the gulfs, and could have had no representation of them to submit. The article also alluded to another chart of part of the coast in the neighbourhood of Cape Leeuwin, as not conveying much information.* (* It was "figuree assez grossierement et sans details.") These statements are useful as enabling us to understand why Baudin was so shy about showing his charts to Flinders. If they gave little satisfaction to the writer of the Moniteur article, we can imagine what a critic who had been over the ground himself would have thought about them.

These considerations scarcely afford reason for inferring that the Government had formed a prejudice against the work of the expedition before making a complete examination of its records, though it is very probable that dissatisfaction was expressed about the charts. Hamelin, also, would be fairly certain to intimate privately what he knew to be the case, that Flinders had been beforehand with the most important of the discoveries. Indeed, the Moniteur article expressly mentioned that when Baudin met Flinders, the latter had "pursued the coast from Cape Leeuwin to the place of meeting." The information that the English captain had accomplished so much, despite the fact that he had left England months after Baudin sailed from France, was not calculated to give pleasure to Ministers. It was to this feeling that Sir Joseph Banks referred when, in writing to Flinders, he said that he had heard that the French Government were not too well pleased with Baudin's work.* (* Girard, writing in 1857, stated that rumours about Baudin's conduct, circulated before the arrival of Le Geographe, induced the public to believe that the expedition had been abortive, without useful results, and that it was to the interest of the Government to forget all about it. F. Peron, page 46. But Girard cites no authority for the statement, and as he was not born in 1804, he is not himself an authoritative witness. He merely repeated Freycinet's assertions.)

The distinguished men of science who stood at the head of the Institute of France were best qualified to judge of the value of the work done; and they at least spoke decisively in its praise. The collections brought home by Le Naturaliste had included one hundred and eighty cases of minerals and animals, four cases of dried plants, three large casks of specimens of timber, two boxes of seeds, and sixty tubs of living plants.* (* Moniteur, 14th Messidor, Revolutionary Year 11 (July 3, 1803).) On June 9, 1806, a Committee of the Institute, consisting of Cuvier, Laplace, Bougainville, Fleurieu, and Lacepede, furnished a report based upon an examination of the scientific specimens and the manuscript of the first volume of the Voyage de Decouvertes, which, in the meantime, had been written by Peron. They referred in terms of warm eulogy to the industry which had collected more than one hundred thousand specimens; to the new species discovered, estimated by the professors at the Musee at two thousand five hundred; and to the care and skill displayed by Peron in describing and classifying, a piece of work appealing with especial force to the co-ordinating intelligence of Cuvier. They directed attention to the observations made by the naturalist upon the British colony at Port Jackson; and their language on this subject may be deemed generous in view of the fact that England and France were then at war. "M. Peron," reported the savants, "has applied himself particularly to studying the details of that vast system of colonisation which is being developed at once upon a great continent, upon innumerable islands, and upon the wide ocean. His work in that respect should be of the greatest interest for the philosopher and the statesman. Never, perhaps, did a subject more interesting and more curious offer itself to the meditation of either, than the colony of Botany Bay, so long misunderstood in Europe."* (* The colony was not at Botany Bay, though the mistake was common enough even in England. But the champion error on that subject was that of Dumas, who, in Les Trois Mousquetaires, chapter 52--the period, as "every schoolboy knows," of Cardinal Richelieu--represents Milady as reflecting bitterly on her fate, and fearing that D'Artagnan would transport her "to some loathsome Botany Bay," a century and a quarter before Captain Cook discovered it! Dumas, however, was a law unto himself in such matters.) Never, perhaps, was there a more shining example of the powerful influence of laws and institutions upon the character of individuals and peoples. To transform the most redoubtable highwaymen, the most abandoned thieves of England, into honest and peaceable citizens; to make laborious husbandmen of them; to effect the same revolution in the characters of the vilest women; to force them, by infallible methods, to become honest wives and excellent mothers of families; to take the young and preserve them, by the most assiduous care, from the contagion of their reprobate parents, and so to prepare a generation more virtuous than that which it succeeds: such is the touching spectacle that these new English colonies present."

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.)