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These, islands are surrounded by a coral reef, but boats may land with great safety. After dinner I attended M. Peyrouse and his officers on shore, where I found him quite established; he had thrown round his tents a stockade, which was guarded by two small guns, and in which they were setting up two long boats, which he had in frame.
I expected and found yet another uncertain height, and beyond it a third, and, a mile beyond, another. This summit was like those random marshy steps which rise continually and wearily between the sluggish rivers of the prairies. I passed the fields that gave his title to La Peyrouse. The cold, which with every hundred feet had increased unnoticed, now first disturbed me.
Peyrouse reached no higher than 60° 30' latitude, and Vancouver only to 55°. Thus we clearly see that this land lay out of the track, not only of those navigators, whose object being to get into the Pacific by the course best known, pass through the Straits of Magellan and Le Maire, or keep as near Cape Horn as possible, but also of those who were sent out expressly to search for land in a high southern latitude.
M. de la Peyrouse says, that those masses were in all respects as if formed by art, only much larger, as the powers of nature exceed those of our laboratories. What then is it that is here meant to be disputed?
Captain Cook was dead, massacred by the savages, but the ardor which had animated him was not extinct; on the 10th of August, 1785, a French sailor, M. de La Peyrouse, left Brest with two frigates for the purpose of completing the discoveries of the English explorer. The king had been pleased to himself draw up his instructions, bearing the impress of an affectionate and over-strained humanity.
"His Majesty would regard it as one of the happiest successes of the expedition," said the instructions, "if it were terminated without having cost the life of a single man." La Peyrouse and his shipmates never came back. Louis XVI. was often saddened by it. "I see what it is quite well," the poor king would repeat, "I am not lucky."
Between it and Langrenus are two large ring-plains with central mountains, and on the N.E., La Peyrouse A, a bright crater, adjoining which is La Peyrouse DELTA, one of the most brilliant spots on the moon. ANSGARIUS. A ring-plain, 50 miles in diameter, still nearer to the limb than the last. BEHAIM. A great ring-plain, 65 miles in diameter, S. of Ansgarius, and connected with it by ridges.
Dela Peyrouse, some dispatches were sent to Brest; but do not think they contain any thing relating to our operations, as Marquis de Castries writes me that the determination of the Council upon our letters will be sent by the ships who is to convoy the expected vessels. I am very sorry I have not seen the Aid de Camp who had a verbal message from General Greene.
In the same year two vessels were dispatched from France in search of La Peyrouse; in April 1792, they made several observations on Van Dieman's Land, the south cape of which they thought was separated from the main land; they also discovered a great harbour.
Distressed by rats. General orders for the regulation of the settlement. On the 1st of February, at day-light in the morning, Lieutenant Dawes, of the marines, and myself, left Sydney Cove in a cutter, in order to proceed to Botany-Bay, and visit Monsieur De la Peyrouse, on the part of Governor Phillip, and to offer him any assistance he might stand in need of.
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