Читать книгу Early Tasmania - James Backhouse Walker - Страница 6

The Cambridge Professor of Modern History, in a recent remarkable book, has shown that the great English event of the 18th century, indeed, the greatest fact of modern English History, has been the expansion of England into lands beyond the seas—the foundation and growth of a Greater Britain. Professor Seeley holds that the great hundred years' struggle between England and France, lasting from the time of Louis XIV. to the days of Napoleon, was, in the main, a duel between the two nations for the possession of the New World. Even in the English conquest of India the Professor traces, not so much the ambition of conquest and the lust of empire, as fear of the French and rivalry with them. By the close of the last century the issue of the strife was no longer doubtful. In India, Wellesley had annihilated French influence, and was rapidly consolidating the English dominion. France had lost for ever her finest possessions in America, though she, on her side, had dealt us a return blow in assisting to tear from England her North American Colonies.

But the struggle was not over, and it was destined to yield yet wider triumphs for the English race. The very humiliation which, France had helped to inflict on her rival was to prove a potent factor in the further expansion of "Greater Britain". It is probably no exaggeration to say that it is to the hostility of France, and her action in America, that we owe in no small measure the British colonisation of Australia—a work which must ever stand as the most momentous event of our century.

The secession of her North American provinces had well nigh left England without a colonial empire. Englishmen straightway set themselves to search for a compensation for their lost possessions, and to And a new outlet for their energies and for their surplus population. A new world lay ready to their hand. As David Livingstone, in our own days, has called into existence a new realm in the dark continent of Africa, so in the days of our great grandfathers, the genius of Captain Cook, England's greatest circumnavigator, had opened up a new realm in the unknown and mysterious seas of the South. But in these Southern seas, as formerly in America and India, England and France were, and indeed still are, rivals. In exploration each nation can boast of distinguished names. The English navigators, Anson, Vancouver, Cook, Furneaux, and Flinders, had active competitors in the Frenchmen, Bougainville, Marion, Surville, La Pérouse, D'Entrecasteaux, and Baudin. Nor were the English the first to entertain the design of colonising the new lands. So far back as the year 1756, an eminent and learned French advocate, M. le President Charles de Brosses, in his Histoire des Navigations aux Terres Australes, had strongly urged upon the Government of France the wisdom of establishing a French colony in the South seas. In the work cited the author passes in review the relative advantages of various portions of the Southern world, and concludes that some part of Australasia * offers the best prospects for settlement, the country being favourable, and access easy, with Pondicherry as a base of operations.** He rejects New Zealand and Van Diemen's Land as too remote; and after hesitating for a while over Quiros' Terre du St. Esprit (the coast between Cooktown and Townsville), finally inclines to New Britain as the most suitable locality. With a sagacious foresight, since amply justified by events, he declares that any colony planted in these regions would hold Ariadne's clew for the whole Southern world. From such a centre, every part of this new realm could in time be explored and conquered, from the Equator to the Antarctic Circle. He elaborately discusses the best means of forming such a settlement, and recommends that after its first establishment a certain number of convicts, male and female, should be sent to it every year to supply the necessary labour, and to be in time transformed from a danger and burden to the State into industrious and useful citizens.*** Still further to strengthen the new colony, he would deport to it, as free citizens, numbers of foundlings, who are in a sense the property of the State which has reared them, and can therefore dispose of them at its pleasure. He warns his countrymen against the danger of waiting until some other nation had proved the practicability of a colony by trying the experiment; for when once any nation has gained a foothold it will not suffer another to share the territory to which it has thus acquired a right by conquest.**** Although various discovery expeditions were despatched from France to the South Seas after the days of De Brosses, the President's warning remained unheeded. France missed her opportunity, and it was left to England to take the first step, and found a new empire in these southern seas, from which—justifying the Frenchman's forecast—she did not scruple from the very first peremptorily to warn off all intruders.

[* De Brosses was President of the Parliament of Dijon. To him we owe the invention of the name Australasia. Nav. aux Terres Aus., i., 80.]

[** Nav. aux Terres Aust., ii., 367, et seq.]

[*** Ibid., i., 28, et seq.]

[**** Ibid., ii., 408.]

It was probably due to the fact of the coincidence of Captain Cook's discoveries with the loss of the American colonies, quite as much as to her naval supremacy, that England chanced to be beforehand with her rival. It takes an effort of imagination to realise the New World which Cook revealed, and how he opened up to men's minds the possibilities and promise of the new field for enterprise. Until his time, New Holland—for as yet Australia was not *—had been little more than a geographical expression. Parts of the Northern and Western coasts, and one ominous Bay of Storms at the South, were laid down more or less vaguely on the maps from the reports of Dutch navigators of the preceding century, and those old and infrequent voyagers had brought back only reports of forbidding shores and desolate territory. The right to these dreary coasts was conceded without dispute to the Dutch, for it was a land that no man desired. The English had no part in its discovery. One Englishman, indeed, and one only—William Dampier—had touched on the Western coast in the year 1688, had found a barren sandy soil, inhabited by wretched savages, with no redeeming advantage, and had left it gladly, thinking it the most miserable spot on the face of the earth. Such was the state of affairs when Cook appeared on the scene. In 1770, on his return from the observation of the Transit of Venus at Tahiti, and in pursuance of instructions to try to solve the mystery of the great South Land, the Endeavour, after rediscovering and surveying the islands of New Zealand, sailed west till the eastern shore of New Holland was sighted. Cook explored the coast from Cape Howe to Cape York; landed at Botany Bay, hoisted the English flag, took possession of the country in the name of King George, and returned home to report the existence of a fine and fertile territory in a temperate climate, well suited for English settlers. At home the growth of feeling in favour of a milder penal code had rendered it necessary to devise some scheme for disposing of criminals, and Pitt and the English Government resolved to choose Botany Bay as the field for a project which should relieve English difficulties, and lay the foundation of a new colony. The first fleet sailed from England, and in January, 1788, Governor Phillip planted the first settlement in New Holland, substantially on the lines indicated in detail by the French President more than a quarter of a century before.

[* Quiros (1606) named his discovery Australia del Espiritu Santo, in honour of Philip of Austria. Purchas, in his English translation of Quiros' voyage (1625) called it Australia Incognita—(See Petherick's Bibliography of Australasia). Dalrymple, in his Collection of Voyages (1770) suggests the name, and Flinders revived it in the Introduction to his Voyage to Terra Australis, 1814, p. iii.]

But the French had never ceased to turn longing eyes towards the new Southern world. If the mind of France had not been so fully occupied in the desperate effort to maintain her naval power against the English in other seas, it is quite possible that to her, and not to England, would have fallen the dominion of Australia. And, probably, suspicion of French designs had its effect in hastening English action. Already, in 1785, the French Government had despatched the celebrated La Pérouse with an expedition to circumnavigate the world, and explore the coasts of New Holland, doubtless, with some more or less definite design of settlement. When, on the 26th January, 1788, La Pérouse, with his ships, the Boussole and the Astrolabe, sailed into Botany Bay, he found an English fleet at anchor there, having arrived five days before him. Governor Phillip had just left the Bay in the Supply to find in Port Jackson a more suitable site for a town; and on the very day La Pérouse's ships came to an anchor the city of Sydney was founded. The French remained in Botany Bay for six weeks, the English and they maintaining a friendly and pleasant intercourse. Collins says that the French were very unfavourably impressed with the prospects of the settlement, the officers having been heard to declare that in their whole voyage they had never found so poor a country, or such wretched people as the natives of New South Wales. On the 10th March La Pérouse sailed from New South Wales to vanish into space—the mystery which shrouded his fate not being solved until nearly 40 years had elapsed.

The English foothold on the Australian continent was now securely established, and disregarding the western half, to with the Dutch were still considered as having a title—something like their present title to Western New Guinea—England, by solemn proclamation, formally laid claim to the whole eastern territory from Cape York to the extreme South Cape of Van Diemen's Land, and as far west as the 135th degree of east longitude.

Still France did not relinquish her dreams of colonisation, but seemed to cherish the idea of disputing with her great rival her exclusive possession of the new territories. There is reason to think that the French designs, if ever distinctly formulated, pointed to the southern extremity of Van Diemen's Land as the locality for a settlement. The Terre de Diémen and the Baie des Tempêtes exercised a particular fascination over successive French navigators, and excited the attention of the French Government. It was a spot known only for a forbidding rock-bound coast, washed by an angry sea, and lashed by perpetual tempests. For more than a century after its discovery by Abel Tasman in 1642 no European had invaded its solitudes, until on the 4th March, 1772, the French navigator, Marion du Fresne, anchored his ships, the Mascarin and the Castries, in the Frederic Hendric Bay of Tasman.** He remained there six days, landed, and attempted to establish intercourse with the natives, the attempt resulting in an encounter in which the first Tasmanian aborigine fell under the fire of European muskets. After Marion, the English, navigators Furneaux (1773) Cook (1777), Cox (1789), and Bligh (1788 and 1792) paid passing visits to Adventure Bay; but it was a Frenchman, again, who made the first survey of the approaches to the Derwent. The instructions to La Pérouse in 1785 had directed him to explore this, the extreme southern point of New Holland; and the last letter written by him from Botany Bay, on 7 February, 1788, notes his intention to proceed there before his return,—an intention there is some reason to believe he executed.*** The exploration was made four years later by Admiral Bruny D'Entrecasteaux, Commander of the expedition sent out by the National Assembly in 1791 to search for the missing navigator. It was to Storm Bay that his ships, the Recherche and Esperance, first directed their course from the Cape of Good Hope. The autumn of 1792 was far advanced before the French Admiral sighted the basaltic cliffs of Van Diemen's Land. Through an error of his pilot, Raoul, he missed Adventure Bay, which he had intended to make, and on 21st April cast anchor at the entrance of the inlet afterwards known to the English as Storm Bay Passage, but which now more fittingly bears the name of D'Entrecasteaux Channel, after its discoverer. Recherche Bay, close at hand, offered a safe and commodious harbour for the ships; and here they remained for a month, their boats exploring and surveying the channel and the various inlets on the coast, while the scientific men journeyed inland, made observations, collected specimens of natural history, and revelled in the examination of a new flora and fauna. The natives, at first timid and distrustful, were soon conciliated, and showed themselves most friendly to the Europeans. On the 17th May the ships entered the Channel, and the French viewed with astonishment the extent of the harbours which unfolded themselves to their delighted gaze, affording a secure shelter spacious enough to contain easily the combined fleet of all the maritime powers of Europe. After a fortnight employed in examining the Channel, the Admiral sailed out of the Passage into Storm Bay, rounded the Pillar, and proceeded to New Caledonia. In the summer of the following year he returned to Van Diemen's Land, and spent another five weeks in the Channel (21 January to 28 February, 1793). During the second stay the French completed the surveys which they had begun in the preceding autumn, explored Norfolk Bay and Frederick Henry Bay (Baie du Nord), and ascended 20 miles up the Derwent, which they named Rivière du Nord. Flinders, with his usual generous recognition of the work of previous navigators, says of the charts of Beautems Beaupré, the hydrographer of the expedition, that "they contain some of the finest specimens of marine surveying perhaps ever made in a new country." Labillardière, the naturalist and historian of the expedition, devotes more than 160 pages of his work to a description of the Terre de Diemen. He speaks with enthusiasm of the country and its productions, of its magnificent forests of blue-gum and other timber, of its soil and fertility, and of the amiability of its peaceful inhabitants, and dilates with pardonable pride and satisfaction on the grandeur and extent of the harbours which French enterprise had discovered in this hitherto dreaded coast. The lengthened stay of D'Entrecasteaux, the minute and elaborate nature of his surveys, and the space his historian devotes to a description of the country and its advantages, indicate some further object than mere geographical research. The names which stud our southern coast, and are familiar in our mouths as household words,—Bruny Island, D'Entrecasteaux Channel, Recherche Bay, Port Esperance, River Huon, Cape Raoul, and others,—stand a perpetual monument to the memory of the French navigators.

[** This it not the Frederick Henry Bay of the colonists, but that marked on the maps as Marion Bay, on the East Coast.]

[*** Bent's Almanac for 1827 states that in the year 1809 Captain Bunker, of the ship Venus, found, buried on the shore of Adventure Bay, a bottle containing letters from La Pérouse dated one month after his leaving Port Jackson. In the year 1826 Captain Peter Dillon discovered traces of La Pérouse's expedition at Vanikoro, in the Santa Cruz Group.]

And now, at length, English explorers appear upon the scene. In 1794, Lieut. John Hayes, of the India Navy, was despatched from India in the ships Duke of Clarence and Duchess on a voyage of discovery, including the exploration of the coasts of Van Diemen's Land. He sailed up the Rivière du Nord—which he re-christened the Derwent—as far as Herdsman's Cove. As the admirable charts of D'Entrecasteaux were unknown to the English until long years after, it was on Hayes' sketch that subsequent visitors had to rely, and in many cases the names he gave have been substituted for those given by the French.

In December, 1797, the adventurous Bass, leaving Port Jackson in an open whaleboat, had solved the vexed problem of the strait which bears the name and immortalises the intrepid daring of its discoverer; and late in the year 1798, Bass and Flinders, in the Norfolk, a little sloop of 25 tons, sailed through Bass' Strait, explored Port Dalrymple, circumnavigated Tasmania, and made a careful examination and survey of the Derwent and its approaches and neighbourhood.

On the 19th October, 1800, when Bonaparte was first Consul, an expedition, consisting of two ships, the Géographe and Naturaliste, sailed out of Havre, amidst great demonstrations, for a voyage of discovery round the world. Commodore Baudin, in the Géographe, was chief of the expedition; Captain Hamelin commanded the Naturaliste. Although fierce war was raging at the time between the two nations, the English Admiralty granted a passport or safe conduct to Baudin, on the ground that scientific expeditions should be exempt from hostilities. Notwithstanding these courtesies of the English Government to the French commander, it was shrewdly suspected that the real design of the expedition was to spy out the state of the English possessions in New Holland, and, if practicable, hoist the standard of Bonaparte at some convenient point of the coast and establish a French colony. Certain it is that Baudin's instructions—afterwards published in Péron's account of the voyage—give colour to the belief. They direct the captain to proceed direct from the Mauritius to the southern point of the Terre Diemen, double the South Cape, carefully examine the Canal D'Entrecasteaux in every part, ascend all the rivers in this portion of the island as far as they were navigable, explore all the eastern coast, carefully survey Banks' Straits, sail through Bass' Strait, and after exploring Hunter's Islands, proceed to the continent of New Holland and search for the great strait which was supposed to separate the eastern part occupied by the English, from the western portion claimed by the Dutch. All this certainly looks very like some further object than geographical discovery. The French expedition doubtless stirred the English to renewed activity, and through the influence of Sir Joseph Banks, Earl Spencer (then at the head of the Admiralty) consented, early in 1801, to despatch the Investigator, a sloop of 334 tons, to make a complete survey of the coast of New Holland. The command was given to Lieut. Matthew Flinders, who had already distinguished himself by some daring explorations in company with Dr. George Bass: and amply did he justify his appointment. The ship's complement was 88 persons, amongst whom served, as a midshipman, John Franklin, afterwards destined, as Sir John Franklin, to become Governor of Tasmania, and to die in solving the problem of the North-West Passage. The Investigator sailed from Spithead on the 18th July, 1801, and sighted Cape Leeuwin on 6th December following. Meantime Commodore Baudin, deviating from his instructions, had gone to the western coast of Australia, and it was not until the 13th January, 1802, that he sighted the De Witts Islands (known to our fishermen as "The Witches"), off the south coast of this island. The French commander anchored next day off Partridge Island, in the Channel; remained there until the 17th February—36 days; occupied the warm summer season in making a very complete examination and survey of the Channel, the River Huon and Port Cygnet, Frederick Henry and Norfolk Bays, and exploring the Derwent carefully nearly as far as Bridgewater. The French had many interviews with the natives, doing everything in their power to conciliate them, and with complete success. Péron, the naturalist, who wrote the history of the expedition, devotes nearly 100 pages of his first volume to Van Diemen's Land. He gives a glowing description of the beauty and capabilities of the country, and a poetical and highly-coloured picture of the kindliness and good qualities of the aborigines. On leaving Storm Bay the Frenchmen sailed for the east coast; they examined Maria Island, visited the Schoutens and Freycinet's Peninsula, and surveyed the remainder of the coast until they reached Banks' Strait. Here the ships were separated by a storm. The Naturaliste surveyed Banks' Strait, and explored the Hunter Islands and other islands in Bass' Strait; and the Géographe sailed for the south coast of New Holland—or, as Baudin christened it, Napoleon Land—to search for the channel which was supposed to divide New Holland. The French expedition had surveyed the whole coast-line of Van Diemen's Land, with the exception of the west coast from Cape Grim to Port Davey.

On the 8th April, 1802, the ships of Baudin and Flinders met off Kangaroo Island. Flinders states that Baudin was communicative of his discoveries in Van Diemen's Land, and declares that he, on his part, furnished the French commander with every information as to his own explorations of the coast, and gave him directions for his guidance. Péron, in his brief notice of the interview between the two commanders, simply remarks that Flinders showed great reserve on the subject of his own operations. The object of this suppression of facts by the Frenchman will appear later on.

On the 25th April, 1802, Captain Hamelin, in the Naturaliste, arrived off Port Jackson. His provisions were exhausted, his crew prostrated by scurvy. He was in urgent need of succour. Yet he approached Port Jackson with many misgivings. War, so far as he knew, was raging in all its bitterness and fury between France and England, and though he bore a safe conduct from the Admiralty, he fully anticipated that he would not be allowed to enter the Port, or, if he was, that the aid he so much needed would be refused him. But his doubts were soon dispelled, for, as he says, he was instantly welcomed by the English with magnanimous generosity. Not only were all the resources of the country placed at the disposal of the French captain, but the most distinguished houses of the colony were thrown open to his officers, and during the whole time they remained they "experienced that delicate and affectionate hospitality which is equally honourable to those who confer it and to those who are its objects." The news of the Peace of Amiens (proclaimed 27 March, 1802), which reached Sydney a short time later, though it made intercourse more pleasant, "could not", Péron says, "increase the kindness which the English displayed towards us." A fortnight later (May 9) Flinders, who had completed a thorough survey of the South Coast, arrived at Port Jackson in the Investigator.

Baudin, in the Géographe, had been some six weeks on the South coast of New Holland, rediscovering and renaming the discoveries already made by Flinders. His crew were suffering terribly from scurvy, and his officers urged his going to Port Jackson to recruit. Whether the Commodore doubted the nature of his reception, or whether the attractions of the Terre de Diemen proved irresistible, does not appear, but Baudin disregarded their protests, and to their intense chagrin, though winter was fast approaching, headed his ship for the cold and stormy south, and on 20th May once more cast anchor in Adventure Bay. The state of his ship's company, however, was such that after only two days' stay he was obliged to give orders to sail for Sydney. Baffled by contrary winds, battered by violent storms, with a crew unable, from illness, to handle the ship, it took him a whole month to make the passage. On the 20th June the Géographe approached the heads of Port Jackson. Not only were they apprehensive respecting the fate of the Naturaliste, and as to the nature of their own reception, but the condition of the crew was most deplorable. Flinders says "it was grievous to see the miserable condition to which both officers and crew were reduced by scurvy, there being, according to the commander's account, out of 170 men not more than 12 capable of doing their duty." Péron quotes the Commander's journal as stating that but four of the crew, including a midshipman, were able to keep the deck, and he adds "there was not one on board who was free from the disease." Many had died, and the surgeon, M. Taillefer, gives a horrible description of the sufferings of the survivors.* In fact, on arriving off Port Jackson the Géographe was unable to make the harbour, until Governor King had sent the Investigator's boat with a number of hands to work the vessels into port. It is hardly necessary to say that the distressed Frenchmen were received with the greatest kindness. The numerous sick were removed to the Colonial Hospital, and tenderly cared for by the English surgeons. Whatever they had need of that the place could furnish was placed at their disposal, and the Governor gave the Commander an unlimited credit at the Public Treasury to enable him to revictual and refit, and also purchase a third vessel. More than this: the Colony was at the time in great want of fresh provisions, floods on the Hawkesbury having destroyed the wheat harvest, salt meat was exceedingly scarce, and fresh meat almost unprocurable; yet so soon as the strangers' necessities were known, Government oxen were killed, and by a common consent the ration of wheat issued to garrison and inhabitants, including the Governor and officers, was reduced one-half, so that the scurvy-stricken crew might not want what was so essential for their recovery. This statement is made on the authority of a letter written by Baudin himself. Both he and Péron handsomely acknowledge the kindness they received, and exhaust their phrases in describing the affectionate and obliging care of Governor King and his unexampled conduct, the courtesy and unremitting attention of the inhabitants, the generosity of the Government, the absolute freedom accorded to their movements, and the sentiments of gratitude which these kindnesses inspired.

[* The scurvy was at this period the scourge of the naval and mercantile marine, and especially of discovery expeditions. Vancouver attributes the high position England had attained, in a great degree, to the attention her captains paid to naval hygiene. The French discovery crews always suffered terribly from want of proper precautions, and from Péron's account Baudin's ships were miserably victualled, and their commander culpably indifferent to the health of his men. Out of 23 scientific men who left France in the Géographe and Naturaliste only three returned to their country. Out of 219 men who sailed with D'Entrecasteaux, 89 died before the ships returned to Mauritius. The French voyages of discovery were singularly fatal to their commanders. Besides La Pérouse, who perished with all his ship's company, not one of the commanders who visited Tasmania lived to return to his native country. Marion du Fresne was killed at New Zealand. Admiral D'Entrecasteaux died at sea off the Admiralty Isles, and his second in command, Huon Kermadec, at New Caledonia. Baudin himself died at Mauritius on the voyage home.]

I have dwelt particularly on these incidents, not only because it is matter of pardonable pride to record how chivalrously Englishmen can behave towards an enemy in distress, but because of the striking contrast which the aid and courtesies extended to the Frenchmen by Governor King and the English colonists offer to the treatment Flinders experienced from the Governor of a French Colony 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 imprisonment, 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 published in Paris, all mention of Flinders' explorations being suppressed, 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. Freycinet (the joint editor of the history of the voyage), remarked to him, in Governor King's house—"Captain, if we had not been kept so long picking up 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 Péron's presence, showed his chart to Baudin and pointed out the limits of his discovery. Flinders generously acquits Péron of blame in the matter, and says that he believes his candour to have been equal to his acknowledged abilities, and that what he wrote was from overruling authority, and smote him to the heart. He attributes the suppressions in Péron's work, and his own treatment, to the secret instructions of the French Government, and possibly to have "been intended as the forerunner of a claim to the possession of the countries so said to have been first discovered by French navigators."