Native Tradition Enabled The History Of The End Of The
Expedition To Be Ascertained.
The French ships, on a dark and stormy
night, were both driven on the reef, and soon pounded to match-wood.
A
few of the sailors got ashore, but most were drowned; and the bulk of the
remainder were lost in an unsuccessful attempt to make for civilised
regions from the coral isolation of Manicolo. A monument to the memory of
the gallant La Perouse, on the coast a few miles from Sydney, now fronts
the Pacific whose winds wafted him to his doom, and beneath whose waters
he found his grave.
The next link in the chain was furnished by the expedition commanded by
Bruni Dentrecasteaux, who, while the hurricane of the Revolution was
raging, was despatched (1791) to search for La Perouse. He made important
discoveries on his own account,* (* Voyage de Dentrecasteaux, redige par
M. de Rossel, Paris 1808; Labillardiere, Relation du Voyage a la
Recherche de la Perouse, Paris 1800.) both on the mainland of Australia
and in Tasmania; and though he found no trace of his predecessor, his own
name is honourably remembered among the eminent navigators who did
original work in Australasia. It was Dentrecasteaux's hydrographer,
Beautemps Beaupre, whose charting of part of the southern coast of
Australia was so highly praised by Flinders.
The expeditions thus enumerated were all despatched before the era of
Napoleon, and appreciation of their objects cannot therefore be
complicated by doubts as to his Machiavellian designs.
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