An interesting light is thrown on the admiration felt for Bass among the colonists at Sydney, by Francois Péron, the historian of Baudin's voyage of exploration. When the French were at Port Jackson in 1802, the whaleboat was lying beached on the foreshore, and was preserved, says Péron, with a kind of "religious respect." Small souvenirs were made of its timbers; and a piece of the keel enclosed in a silver frame, was presented by the Governor to Captain Baudin, as a memorial of the "audacieuse navigation." Baudin's artist, in making a drawing of Sydney, was careful to show Bass's boat stayed up on the sand; and Péron, in his Voyage de Découvertes aux Terres Australes, respectfully described the discovery of "the celebrated Mr. Bass" as "precious from a marine point of view."
