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Governor Merkus obtained for D'Urville's natural history collections some fine barberosas, a sapioutang the latter a little animal of the size of a calf, with the same kind of muzzle, paws, and turned-back horns serpents, birds, fishes, and plants. According to D'Urville the people of the Celebes resemble in externals the Polynesians rather than the Malays.
Before leaving the scene of this melancholy story, we will glean a few details from D'Urville's account of it. The Vanikoro, Mallicolo, or, as Dillon calls it, the La Pérouse group, consists of two islands, Research and Tevaï. The former is no less than thirty miles in circumference, whilst the latter is only nine miles round.
D'Urville's anxiety about the fate of his sailors, and of Faraquet, who was in command of them, knew no bounds. Nothing was left for him to do but to make an attack upon the sacred village of Mafanga, containing the tombs of several of the principal families.
Krusenstern says this of Marshall Island; and Folger Island is written with small letters in D'Urville's chart; uncoloured.
Meanwhile several officers climbed through the thick furze clothing the hills overlooking the bay, and the following is D'Urville's verdict on the desolate scene which met their view. "Not a bird, not an insect, not even a reptile to be seen, the solemn, melancholy silence is unbroken by the voice of any living creature."
I wondered if Captain Nemo, foolishly imprudent, would steer his vessel into that pass where Dumont d'Urville's two corvettes touched; when, swerving again, and cutting straight through to the west, he steered for the Island of Gilboa. It was then three in the afternoon. The tide began to recede, being quite full.
"Even so, captain," I said, "there is one major similarity between Dumont d'Urville's sloops of war and the Nautilus." "What's that, sir?" "Like them, the Nautilus has run aground!" "The Nautilus is not aground, sir," Captain Nemo replied icily.
The population of this group, if we accept D'Urville's account, form a kind of transition between the copper-coloured, or the Polynesian, and the black or Melanesian races. Their strength and vigour are in proportion to their tall figures, and they make no secret of their cannibal propensities.
The neighbourhood, however, is interesting enough on account of the curious aqueducts for supplying the town with water, and the Mercede forest which, in D'Urville's opinion, might more justly be called a coppice, for it contains nothing but shrubs and ferns. The population seemed happy, but extremely lazy; economical, but horribly dirty; and the less said about their morals the better.
Some said it was a compact and isolated mass, others and this was D'Urville's opinion thought these lofty mountains had a base of earth or of rocks, or that they might even be the bulwarks of a huge extent of land which they called Clarie. It is situated in 128 degrees E. long.
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