177& THE PACIFIC OCEAN. 147 



contained apiece of parchment, on which was written 

 the following inscription : 



Ludovico XV. Galliarum 



rege, et d* de Boynes 



regi a Secretis ad res 

 maritimas annis 177^ ct 

 1773. 



From this inscription, it is clear, that we were not 

 the first Europeans who had been in this harbour. I 

 supposed it to be left by Monsieur de Boisguehenneu, 

 who went on shore in a boat, on the 13th of Feb- 

 ruary, 1772, the same day that Monsieur de Ker- 

 guelen discovered this land ; as appears by a note 

 in the French chart of the southern hemisphere, 

 published the following year, t 



* The (</), no doubt, is a contraction of the word Domino. The 

 French Secretary of the Marine was then Monsieur de Boynes. 



f 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, com- 

 memorates 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 accom- 

 modate 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 Hemi- 

 sphere 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 die 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 



L 2 



