Page:A Voyage to Terra Australis Volume 1.djvu/418

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It is said by M. Peron, and upon my authority too, that the Investigator had not been able to penetrate behind the Isles of St. Peter and St. Francis; and though he doth not say directly, that no part of the before unknown coast was discovered by me, yet the whole tenor of his Chap. XV induces the reader to believe that I had done nothing which could interfere with the prior claim of the French.

Yet M. Peron was present afterwards at Port Jackson, when I showed one of my charts of this coast to captain Baudin, and pointed out the limits of his discovery; and so far from any prior title being set up at that time to Kanguroo Island and the parts westward, the officers of the Géographe always spoke of them as belonging to the Investigator. The first lieutenant, Mons. Freycinet, even made use of the following odd expression, addressing himself to me in the house of governor King, and in the presence of one of his