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Updated: July 8, 2025
Dillon, having made all inquiries, stayed in the unlucky place till October. Then he quitted Vanikoro, and directed his course towards New Zealand; put into Calcutta, 7th April, 1828, and returned to France, where he was warmly welcomed by Charles X. But at the same time, without knowing Dillon's movements, Dumont d'Urville had already set out to find the scene of the wreck.
The aspect of the land is flat and monotonous, so that a journey of one or two miles will give as fair an impression of the country as a complete tour of the island. The number of the population who have the true Polynesian cast of countenance may be put down at about 7000. D'Urville says "they combine the most opposite qualities.
D'Urville and Lesson, full of curiosity to study the inhabitants, who belonged to the Papuan race, started for the shore immediately after the corvette arrived at the island in a boat manned with seven sailors. They had already walked some distance in a deluge of rain, when all at once they found themselves opposite a cottage built upon piles, and covered over with leaves of the plane-tree.
"Their straight walls," says D'Urville, "rose far above our masts, glowering down upon our vessels, which appeared of absurdly small dimensions, as compared with their huge masses. The spectacle spread out before us was alike grand and terrible. One might have fancied oneself in the narrow streets of a city of giants."
Just then Captain Nemo asked me what I knew about the wreck of La Perouse. "Only what everyone knows, Captain," I replied. "And could you tell me what everyone knows about it?" he inquired, ironically. "Easily." I related to him all that the last works of Dumont d'Urville had made known works from which the following is a brief account.
On the 11th of June the corvette set sail for the harbour of Carteret; surveyed one by one the islands of Erronan and Annatom, the Loyalty Islands, of which group D'Urville discovered the Chabrol and Halgan Islands, the little group of the Beaupie Islands, the Astrolabe reefs, all the more dangerous as they are thirty miles distant from the Beaupie Islands, and sixty from New Caledonia.
Before following D'Urville, however, we must pause with him for awhile at Hobart Town, which he looked upon even then as a place of remarkable importance. "Its houses," he says, "are very spacious, consisting only of one story and the ground-floor, though their cleanness and regularity give them a very pleasant appearance.
Leaving New Zealand on the 18th of March, 1827, D'Urville steered for Tonga Tabou, identified to begin with the islands Curtis, Macaulay, and Sunday; endeavoured, but without success, to find the island of Vasquez de Mauzelle, and arrived off Namouka on the 16th of April.
After leaving this bay, the corvette reached the Bay of Mercury; surveyed Barrier Island, entered Shouraki or Hauraki Bay, identified the Hen and Chickens and the Poor Knights Islands, finally arriving at the Bay of Islands. The native tribes met with by D'Urville in this part of the island were busy with an expedition against those of Shouraki and Waikato Bays.
During his stay in Tasmania Ross received information of what had been accomplished by Wilkes and Dumont d'Urville in the very region which the Admiralty had sent him to explore. The effect of this news was that Ross changed his plans, and decided to proceed along the 170th meridian E., and if possible to reach the Magnetic Pole from the eastward.
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