the ship gave less trouble on
the voyage across the Indian Ocean than she had done on the run south.
She left False Bay on November 4th. The run across the Indian Ocean was
uneventful, except that the ship ran foul of a whale apparently sleeping
on the water, and "caused such an alarm that he sank as expeditiously as
possible"; and that an albatross was captured which, "being caught with
hook and line it had its proper faculties and appeared of a varocious
nature."* (* Smith's Journal, Mitchell Library manuscripts.) On December
6th the coast of Australia was sighted near Cape Leeuwin.

CHAPTER 13. THE FRENCH EXPEDITION.

It will be necessary to devote some attention to the French expedition of
discovery, commanded by Nicolas Baudin, which sailed from Havre on
October 19th, 1800, nearly two months before the British Admiralty
authorised the despatch of the Investigator, and nine months all but two
days before Flinders was permitted to leave England.

The mere fact that this expedition was despatched while Napoleon
Bonaparte was First Consul of the French Republic, has led many writers
to jump to the conclusion that it was designed to cut out a portion of
Australia for occupation by the French; that, under the thin disguise of
being charged with a scientific mission, Baudin was in reality an
emissary of Machiavellian statecraft, making a cunning move in the great
game of world-politics. The author has, in an earlier book* endeavoured
to show that such was not the case. (* Terre Napoleon (London, 1910).
Since that book was published, I have had the advantage of reading a
large quantity of manuscript material, all unpublished, preserved in the
Archives Nationales and the Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris. It strengthens
the main conclusions promulgated in Terre Napoleon, but of course
amplifies the evidence very considerably. The present chapter is written
with the Baudin and other manuscripts, as well as the printed material,
in mind.) Bonaparte did not originate the discovery voyage. He simply
authorised it, as head of the State, when the proposition was laid before
him by the Institute of France, a scientific body, concerned with the
augmentation of knowledge, and anxious that an effort should be made to
complete a task which the abortive expeditions of Laperouse and
Dentrecasteaux had failed to accomplish.

Moreover, if Bonaparte had wished to acquire territory in Australia, he
was not so foolish a person as to fit ou