The World Is
Perhaps Too Little Inclined To Accord To Him Who Promulgates An Idea The
Praise Readily Bestowed Upon Those Who Realise It.
Bougainville discovered the Navigator Islands, re-discovered the Solomon
group, and was only just forestalled by the Englishman, Wallis, in the
discovery of Tahiti.
He produced a book of travel which may be read with
scarcely less interest than the wonderful work of his contemporary, Cook.
The voyage of Nicholas Marion-Dufresne (1771) differed from the other
French expeditions of the series in that one of the ships belonged to the
commander, and part of the cost was sustained by him. He was fired by a
passion for exploration, which led him to propose that he should take out
his vessel, Le Mascurin, in company with a ship of the navy, and that a
grant should be made to him from the public funds. The French Government
acquiesced, and gave him Le Marquis de Castries. He did some exploring in
southern Tasmania, but his career was cut short in New Zealand, where, in
the Bay of Islands, he was killed and eaten by Maories in 1772.* (*
Rochon, Nouveau Voyage a la Mar du Sud, Paris 1783.) One of the objects
of the voyage was to take back to Tahiti a native woman, Aontouron, who
had been brought to Paris by Bougainville to be shown at the court of
Louis XV; but she died of smallpox en route.
Again, in 1785, the expedition commanded by the ill-fated La Perouse
sailed from France on a discovery voyage.* (* See the Voyage de la
Perouse, redige par M. L.A. Milet-Mureau, volume 1 Paris 1797.) The
appearance of his two ships, La Boussole and l'Astrolabe, in Port Jackson
only a fortnight after Governor Phillip had landed in Botany Bay to
establish the first British settlement in Australia, was an event not
less surprising to the governor than to La Perouse, who had left France
before colonisation was intended by the English Government, though he
heard of it in the course of the voyage. The French navigator remained in
the harbour from February 23 to March 10 (1788), on excellent terms with
Phillip; and then, sailing away to pursue his discoveries, "vanished
trackless into blue immensity, and only some mournful mysterious shadow
of him hovered long in all heads and hearts." His remark to Captain King,
"Mr. Cook has done so much that he has left me nothing to do but admire
his work," indicated the generous candour of his disposition. His fate
after he sailed from Sydney remained a mystery for forty years, Flinders,
on his voyage inside the Barrier Reef in 1802, kept a lookout for
wreckage that might afford a key to the problem. He wrote: "The French
navigator La Perouse, whose unfortunate situation, if in existence, was
always present to my mind, had been wrecked, as it was thought, somewhere
in the neighbourhood of New Caledonia; and if so the remnants of his
ships were likely to be brought upon this coast by the trade winds, and
might indicate the situation of the reef or island which had proved so
fatal to him.
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