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Baudin's conduct, and that of his officers, never suggested that search for a site for settlement was part of the mission of the expedition; and, in the face of the commodore's emphatic denials, positive evidence, or a strong chain of facts to the contrary, would have to be forthcoming before such a story could be entertained.
This heartless conduct, taken in conjunction with Baudin's abandonment of Boullanger on the Tasmanian coast, and his strange behaviour to the Casuarina after the exploration of the gulfs, leaves one in no doubt as to his singular deficiency in the qualities essential to the commander of an expedition of discovery.
It may legitimately be suggested that though all the French expeditions enumerated in a previous chapter, including Baudin's, were promoted for purposes of discovery, the rulers of France were not without hope that profit would spring from them in the shape of rich territories or fields for French exploitation. It is, indeed, extremely likely that such was the case.
Flinders so far relied on Baudin's statement that when, on April 26, he sighted Port Phillip heads himself, he thought he was off Westernport, which his friend George Bass had discovered in 1798. Baudin, then, knew nothing about Port Phillip when he met Flinders on April 8. But if somebody else saw it from the masthead on March 30, why was not the fact reported to the commander?
There is nothing incredible in Peron's narrative of the sufferings of himself and his companions on this excursion. It is not surprising to one with a knowledge of the local conditions. The exertions they had made should have earned them commendation, or at least compassion, from the commandant. But Baudin's view was censorious.
The Moniteur of July 2, 1808, contained a long article by Lieutenant Henri de Freycinet elder brother of Louis reviewing the work of the expedition, on the occasion of the publication of Peron's first volume. Now, Henri de Freycinet was Baudin's first lieutenant on Le Geographe. If Port Phillip was seen from that ship on March 30, he should have seen it if Baudin did not.
"What are you doing there?" "What is that to you?" said Gindrier. "You have come to fetch Baudin's body?" "Yes." "Is this your carriage?" "Yes." "Get in at once, and pull down the blinds." "What do you mean?" "You are the Representative Gindrier. I know you. You were this morning on the barricade. If any other than myself should see you, you are lost."
As he met Baudin's corvette in the late afternoon, it was, by nautical reckoning, April 9th. But by the calendar, the civil day commencing at midnight, the date was April 8th, as stated by Flinders in his published volumes, by both Peron and Louis de Freycinet, and in the log of Le Geographe.
Baudin's letter of farewell was a worthy acknowledgment of the benefits he had received.
The superiority of the work done by Baudin's expedition in the vicinity of the two gulfs, then, was not due to any fraudulent use of Flinders' material, but simply to the fact that there was a competent officer in charge of it at that time; and there is nothing on the charts for which Freycinet was personally responsible to justify the belief that his work claiming to be original was not genuinely his own.
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