The station of Risden was accordingly planted on the estuary of the Derwent, a little above the present town of Hobart; while on the shores of Port Phillip another expedition sent out from the mother country sought, but for the present in vain, to find a suitable site.

The French cruise therefore exerted on the fortunes of the English and French peoples an influence such as has frequently accrued from their colonial rivalry: it spurred on the island Power to more vigorous efforts than she would otherwise have put forth, and led to the discomfiture of her continental rival.

The plans of Napoleon for the acquisition of Van Diemen's Land and the middle of Australia had an effect like that which the ambition of Montcalm, Dupleix, Lally, and Perron has exerted on the ultimate destiny of many a vast and fertile territory.
Still, in spite of the destruction of his fleet at Trafalgar, Napoleon held to his Australian plans.

No fact, perhaps, is more suggestive of the dogged tenacity of his will than his order to Peron and Freycinet to publish through the Imperial Press at Paris an exhaustive account of their Australian voyage, accompanied by maps which claimed half of that continent for the tricolour flag.

It appeared in 1807, the year of Tilsit and of the plans for the partition of Portugal and her colonies between France and Spain.