st as their espionage, and
their supply of illicitly-obtained and flavoured information to Decaen in
Mauritius, were essays to advance their own interests by unworthy
services.

Freycinet's anxiety to get his maps out before Flinders had time to
publish is curiously exhibited in a letter from him to the Minister of
Marine (August 29th, 1811). Flinders was then back in England, hard at
work upon his charts. A volume of text, and one thin book of plates,
containing only two maps, had been published at Paris in 1807. Then delay
occurred, and in 1811 the engravers, not having been paid for their work,
refused to continue. Freycinet appealed to the Minister in these terms:*
(* Manuscripts, Archives Nationales, Marine BB4 996.) "Very powerful
reasons, Monsieur, appear to demand that the atlas should be published
with very little delay, and even before the text which is to accompany
it. Independently of the advantages to me personally as author, of which
I shall not speak, the reputation of the expedition ordered by His
Majesty appears to me to be strongly involved. I have the honour to
remind your Excellency that Captain Flinders was sent on discovery to
Terra Australis a short while after the French Government had despatched
an expedition having the same object. The rival expeditions carried out
their work in the same field, but the French had the good fortune to be
the first to return to Europe. Now that Flinders is again in England, and
is occupied with the publication of the numerous results of his voyage,
the English Government, jealous on account of the rivalry between the two
expeditions, will do all it can for its own. The conjectures I have
formed acquire a new force by the recent announcement made by the
newspapers, that Captain Flinders' voyages in the South Seas are to be
published by command of the Lords of the Admiralty. If the English
publish before the French the records of discoveries made in New Holland,
they will, by the fact of that priority of publication, take from us the
glory which we have a right to claim. The reputation of our expedition
depends wholly upon the success of our geographical work, and the more
nearly our operations and those of the English approach perfection, and
the more nearly our charts resemble each other, the more likelihood there
is of our being accused of plagiarism, or at all events of giving rise to
the thought that the English charts were necessary to aid us in
constructing o