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Updated: April 30, 2025
Let us listen to La Pérouse, if we wish to know and admire the army with which our missionaries subdued the natives of both Californias; let us read, dispassionately, the wonderful deeds of the Jesuits in other parts of America, and, above all, let us visit the Philippine Islands and, with astonishment, shall we there behold extended ranges, studded with temples and spacious convents; the Divine worship celebrated with pomp and splendor; regularity in the streets, and even luxury in the houses and dress; schools of the first rudiments in all the towns, and the inhabitants well versed in the art of writing.
Dampier, Cook, La Pérouse, Bligh, Edwards and the Pandora, Vancouver, Flinders, Bass all these are familiar to the world, and there are others in plenty; for example, Grant, who in his vessel, the brig Lady Nelson, did such work in Australian waters as, if performed nowadays say in Africa, would have been recorded in hundreds of newspaper interviews, many process-work pictures and a 21s. book with cheap editions!
It is often said, indeed, that they went altogether the wrong way to work for the achievement of the much-desired result; and it is unquestionably true, as La Pérouse long ago pointed out, that they made the fundamental, but with them inevitable mistake, of sacrificing the temporal and material welfare of the natives to the consideration of so-called "heavenly interests."
Vancouver was quickly followed in the year 1792 by M. D'Entrecasteaux, who, having with him the ships LA RECHERCHE and L'ESPERANCE, was in quest of the fate of La Perouse. Off Termination Island-the last land seen by Vancouver a gale sprang up, and the French ships had to seek shelter.
By order of the French government, Mess. de la Perouse and de Langle sailed from Brest, in August, 1785, in the frigates Boussole and Astroloobe, on an enterprise, the express purpose of which was the improvement of geography, astronomy, natural history, and philosophy, and to collect accounts of customs and manners.
The Flat Island, which, for the reason above mentioned, occupies a much larger space on our map than on that of La Pérouse, is entirely overgrown with wood, and has a very pleasant appearance. At a little distance from this, to the north-west, another little island, which does not appear to have been observed by that Voyager, rises perpendicularly from the sea.
In 1785 the Count de La Pérouse and his subordinate, Captain de Langle, were sent by King Louis XVI of France on a voyage to circumnavigate the globe. They boarded two sloops of war, the Compass and the Astrolabe, which were never seen again.
Without taking first rank, like the expedition of Cook or that of La Pérouse, Kruzenstern's trip was not without interest. We owe no great discovery to the Russian explorer, but he verified and rectified the work of his predecessors. This was in fact what most of the navigators of the nineteenth century had to do, the progress of science enabling them to complete what had been begun by others.
The Bayonnaise cast her anchor before Vanikoro some months after the departure of the Astrolabe, but found no new document; but stated that the savages had respected the monument to La Perouse. That is the substance of what I told Captain Nemo. "So," he said, "no one knows now where the third vessel perished that was constructed by the castaways on the island of Vanikoro?" "No one knows."
The two strangers proved to be the Bussole and Astrolabe, which sailed from Brest in June, 1785, upon discoveries, and were commanded by Mons. de la Perouse; Mons. de L'Angle, who commanded one of the ships when they left France, had been lately, when the ships were at the Islands of Navigators, murdered, with several other officers and seamen, by the natives; who had, before that unfortunate day, always appeared to be upon the most friendly and familiar terms with them.
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