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Updated: June 8, 2025
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 captain approached, placed a finger over a position on the chart, and pronounced just one word: "Vanikoro." This name was magic! It was the name of those islets where vessels under the Count de La Pérouse had miscarried. I straightened suddenly. "The Nautilus is bringing us to Vanikoro?" I asked. "Yes, professor," the captain replied.
We were close to Vanikoro, really the one to which Dumont d'Urville gave the name of Isle de la Recherche, and exactly facing the little harbour of Vanou, situated in 16° 4' S. lat., and 164° 32' E. long. The earth seemed covered with verdure from the shore to the summits in the interior, that were crowned by Mount Kapogo, 476 feet high.
The depth within the lagoon-channel also varies much; from 10 to 30 fathoms may be taken as an average; but at Vanikoro there are spaces no less than 56 fathoms or 336 feet deep.
To this may be added some touches from the home letter of August 27, off Vanikoro: 'I don't deny that I am thankful that the Tikopia visit is well over. The people are so very powerful and so independent and unmanageable, that I always have felt anxious about visiting them. Once we were there in 1856, and now again. I hope to keep on visiting them annually.
It will be perceived more clearly by inspecting the following sections which are real ones, taken in north and south lines, through the islands with their barrier-reefs, of Vanikoro, Gambier, and Maurua; and they are laid down, both vertically and horizontally, on the same scale of a quarter of an inch to a mile. Vanikoro. 2. Gambier Islands. 3. Maurua.
The Captain came up to me, put his finger on one spot on the chart, and said this single word. "Vanikoro." The effect was magical! It was the name of the islands on which La Perouse had been lost! I rose suddenly. "The Nautilus has brought us to Vanikoro?" I asked. "Yes, Professor," said the Captain. "And I can visit the celebrated islands where the Boussole and the Astrolabe struck?"
The latter took up residence on the island and built a smaller craft with rubble from the two large ones. A few seamen stayed voluntarily in Vanikoro. The others, weak and ailing, set sail with the Count de La Pérouse. They headed to the Solomon Islands, and they perished with all hands on the westerly coast of the chief island in that group, between Cape Deception and Cape Satisfaction!"
At Vanikoro, the lagoon-channel is remarkably deep, scarcely any alluvial soil has accumulated at the foot of the lofty included mountains, and remarkably few islets have been formed by the heaping of fragments and sand on the wall-like barrier reef; these facts, and some analogous ones, led me to believe that this island must lately have subsided and the reef grown upwards: here again earthquakes are frequent and very severe.
Dillon guessed that the ships at issue were those under the Count de La Pérouse, ships whose disappearance had shaken the entire world. He tried to reach Vanikoro, where, according to the native boatman, a good deal of rubble from the shipwreck could still be found, but winds and currents prevented his doing so. Dillon returned to Calcutta.
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