MEMOIR OF C. F. BEAUTEMPS-BEAUPRE, 123 



turous circumnavigations of the Magellans, Mendanas, Drakes, Tasmans, and 

 Dampiers, made known the principal outlines of the two oceans, but Avith very 

 imperfect exactness, as may be perceived from a glance at the old globes which 

 are still of frequent occurrence in Paris. That, according to the happy expres- 

 sion of M. Yillemain, was the heroic age of the navigation of discovery ; the 

 modern Argonauts went forth in their search for the golden fleece with an ardor 

 little favorable to systematic exploration, and which yet did not prevent them 

 from overlooking the rich auriferous deposits of California and Avistralia. 



Towards the middle of the eighteenth century, after Bufl'on had published his 

 J^atural History, the taste for voyages was revived under a form even then 

 much more scientific. In the course of a few years we see Byron, Carteret, 

 Wallis, traverse the Pacific ocean, and make the tour of the world. Cook is 

 sent to Tahiti to observe, June 3, 1769, the passage of Venus over the disc of 

 the sun. He makes two other important voyages, and after having traversed 

 the Pacific in all directions, and penetrated into the frozen regions of both poles, 

 falls in 1779 beneath the weapons of the natives of the Sandwich islands. Cook 

 remaiu.s the principal figure and characteristic of this period ; but had fate per- 

 mitted the instructions given to la Perouse to have been completely carried 

 out, the voyage of this last would, perhaps, have afforded the best example of 

 what it was possible to accomplish with the hydrographic methods then in lise. 

 These different enterprises made known almost all the lands and archipelagos 

 with which the ocean is strown, and furnished charts which already presented 

 their general form with a great degree of fidelity. 



Last come the hydrographic voyages of precision. If the expedition of 

 d'Entrecasteaux offers the first example of them, the voyage of the Coquille, 

 executed under the command and published under the direction of our distin- 

 guished colleague. Captain Duperrey, must, perhaps, be regarded as the most 

 perfect type of this class of enterprises. To the same class belong the almost 

 too hazardous voyages of Sir John Ross among the ices of the antarctic pole, 

 and those not less daring of M. Dumont d'Urville, 



The hydrographic study of the archipelago of Santa Cruz, which retained 

 around M. Beautemps-Beaupre some of the most skilful officers of the frigate, 

 did not so exclusively occupy the attention of Admiral d'Entrecasteaux and 

 other chiefs of the expedition as to divert their attention from the main object 

 of their mission, which was to seek for traces of la Perouse. They constantly 

 communicated with the shores, questioned the natives, examined the objects in 

 their possession, and observed, among other things, a piece of iron from the 

 hoop of a cask, set as a hatchet ; but no one then suspected that there was here 

 a vestige of the expedition of la Perouse. The admiral has minutely recorded 

 the reasons why no importance was attached to the circumstance. 



Nevertheless the chart of the archipelago of Santa Cruz presents, in its SE. 

 portion, an island on which by a rather singular chance the admiral bestowed 

 the name of la Recherche, after that of his own frigate sent in search of la 

 Perouse. "We took the bearing of this island, says M. Beautemps-Beaupre, 

 for the first time from our point of station at 20 minutes after 9 o'clock, 19th 

 May, at a great distance. At noon, the same day, we again took its bearing, 

 and then lost sight of it." Situated at the southeast extremity of the archipel- 

 ago of Meudaiia, this island has been in like manner seen and lost sight of by 

 not a few other navigators in whose track it lay, and who little imagined that 

 la Perouse and his companions had paid v/ith their lives for the honor of having 

 previously discovered it. 



Thus two years earlier than d'Entrecasteaux, Captain Edwards, commanding 

 the English frigate Tandora, had .discovered, August 13, 1791, this same island, 

 which he had named IPitt island, and had sailed around its southern shore with- 

 out suspecting that it concealed the remains of a world-renowned shipwreck. 

 Thirty years later, in 1823, Captain Dupen-ey, among whose oflficers was M. 



