Note 126 — CHAP. IV.

On perusing this paragraph of the Journal, it will be natural to ask, How could Monsieur de Boisguehenneu, in the beginning of 1772, leave an inscription, which, upon the very face of it, commemorates a transaction of the following year? Captain Cook’s manner of expressing himself here, strongly marks, that he made this supposition only for want of information to enable him to make any other. He had no idea that the French had visited this land a second time; and, reduced to the necessity of trying to accommodate what he saw himself, to what little he had heard of their proceedings, he confounds a transaction which we, who have been better instructed, know, for a certainty, belongs to the second voyage, with a similar one, which his chart of the Southern Hemisphere has recorded, and which happened in a different year, and at a different place.

The bay, indeed, in which Monsieur de Boisguehenneu landed, is upon the west side of this land, considerably to the south of Cape Louis, and not far from another more southerly promontory, called Cape Bourbon; a part of the coast which our ships were not upon. Its situation is marked upon our chart; and a particular view of the bay du Lion Marin (for so Boisguehenneu called it), with the soundings, is preserved by Kerguelen.

But if the bottle and inscription, found by Captain Cook’s people, were not left here by Boisguehenneu, by whom and when were they left? This we learn most satisfactorily, from the accounts of Kerguelen’s second voyage, as published by himself and Monsieur de Pagés, which present us with the following particulars: That they arrived on the west side of this land on the 14th of December, 1773; that, steering to the north-east, they discovered, on the 16th, the Isle de Réunion, and the other small islands as mentioned above; that, on the 17th, they had before them the principal land (which they were sure was connected with that seen by them on the 14th), and a high point of that land, named by them Cape François; that beyond this Cape the coast took a south-easterly direction, and behind it they found a bay, called by them Baie de l’Oiseau, from the name of their frigate; that they then endeavoured to enter it, but were prevented by contrary winds and blowing weather, which drove them off the coast eastward; but that, at last, on the 6th of January, Monsieur de Rosnevet, Captain of the Oiseau, was able to send his boat on shore into this bay, under the command of Monsieur de Rochegude, one of his officers, who took possession of that bay, and of all the country, in the name of the King of France, with all the requisite formalities.

Here, then, we trace, by the most unexceptionable evidence, the history of the bottle and inscription; the leaving of which was, no doubt, one of the requisite formalities observed by Monsieur de Rochegude on this occasion. And though he did not land till the 6th of January, 1774, yet, as Kerguelen’s ships arrived upon the coast on the 14th of December, 1773, and had discovered and looked into this very bay on the 17th of that month, it was with the strictest propriety and truth that 1773, and not 1774, was mentioned as the date of the discovery.

We need only look at Kerguelen’s and Cook’s charts, to judge that the Baie de l’Oiseau, and the harbour where the French inscription was found, is one and the same place. But besides this agreement as to the general position, the same conclusion results more decisively still, from another circumstance worth mentioning: the French, as well as the English visitors of this bay and harbour, have given us a particular plan of it; and whoever compares ours, published in this volume, with that to be met with in Kerguelen’s and de Pagés’s voyages, must be struck with a resemblance that could only be produced by copying one common original with fidelity. Nay, even the soundings are the same upon the same spots in both plans, being forty-five fathoms between the two Capes, before the entrance of the bay; sixteen fathoms farther in, where the shores begin to contract; and eight fathoms up, near the bottom of the harbour.

To these particulars, which throw abundant light on this part of our author’s Journal, I shall only add, that the distance of our harbour from that where Boisguehenneu landed, in 1772, is forty leagues. For this we have the authority of Kerguelen, in the following passage: “Monsieur de Boisguehenneu descendit le 13 de Février, 1772, dans un baie, qu il nommé Baie du Lion Marin, et prit possession de cette terre au nom de Roi; il n’y vit aucune trace d’habitants. Monsieur de Rochegude, en 1774, a descendu dans un autre baie, que nous avons nommé Baie de l’Oiseau, et cette seconde rade est à quarantes lieues de la première. Il en a également pris possession, et il n’y trouva également aucune trace d’habitants.” Kerguelen, p. 92.