MEMOIR OF C. F. BEAUTEMPS-BEAUPRE. 125 



The following is the amount of the information obtained from the natives : 

 About forty years previous to 1828, (which would carry us back to 1788, the date 

 of la Perouse's disappearance,) one morning, at the close of a very dark night, 

 during which the wind blew with violence from the SE., the islanders suddenly de- 

 scried on the southern coast, opposite the district of Tauema, an cnorraons pirogue, 

 stranded upon the reefs. It was rapidly demolished by the waves, and so en- 

 tirely disappeared that nothing was ever recovered from the wreck. Of the 

 persons who manned it a few only succeeded in escaping in a boat and gained 

 the shore. The following day, likewise in the morning, a second pirogue, 

 similar to the first, was discovered on the rocks before Paiou ; where, in the 

 lee of the island, and less racked by the wind and sea, stranded moreover on a 

 level shelf of twelve or fifteen feet depth, it remained some time in its position 

 without being destroyed. This, like the first, bore a white ensign. The 

 strangers who manned it landed at Paiou, where they established themselves 

 with those saved from the other ship, and immediately set about constructing 

 a small vessel from the fragments of the ship which had not gone dovn. Their 

 task was completed in six or seven moons, and, as most, of the savages averred, 

 all the strangers left the island. A few, however, declared that two remained 

 behind, but that these had not long survived. 



M. do Fromelin, who also visited these shores in 1828, on the corvette la 

 Bayonnaisc, and who had doubtless heard of the discovery of the English Cap- 

 tain Dillon, ascertained by examination the existence of the remains of the 

 French frigate on the reefs of Vanikoro. 



It was a source of regret to M. Dumont d'Urville thathe had not been able, 

 in 1828, to visit in person the place of the shipwreck ; hence, when on a last 

 and memorable expedition he traversed anew the great ocean, he caused his 

 ships, the Astrolabe and the Zclee, to lie to, 6th November, 1838, near the 

 "eef of the southern shore of Vanikoro. Landing in a sea too rough to admit 

 f stopping on the reef, he discovered a space cleared of trees, which appeared 

 to him to have been the spot where the parties from the wreck had pitched their 

 camp. Near it he observed a large cocoa-nut tree which had been deeply cut 

 around the trunk at two metres above the ground, besides other traces of the 

 use of the axe at a remote date, but beyond this he noticed no new indications. 

 The two frigates mounted with cannon, which could be none but those of la 

 Perouse, for no others were knoAvn to have disappeared in these seas, had 

 doubtless encountered, but with more adverse fortune, casualties similar to those 

 which befell the frigates of Admiral d'Entrecasteaux ; of which one was near 

 being lost on the Beaupre islands at the time of their discovery, and the other 

 struck on a reef of zoophytes in the pass which forms an entrance to the haven 

 of Balade, but was fortunately extricated. 



It was not an impossibility that the remnant of the crews of la Perouse should 

 be saved in the bark which they had constructed, and on which they put to sea 

 about the close of the year 1788. In fact, the English Captain Bligh, of the 

 ship Bounty, abandoned in the midst of the South sea by his revolted crew, 

 in an undecked shallop only twenty-two feet in length, passed, 18th May, 1789, 

 about fifty leagues to the south, and consequently almost within sight of the 

 isles of Vanikoro, and succeeded. May 29, in reaching the coast of NeAV Holland 

 at the south entrance of Torres' straits, whence they made their Avay to Cou- 

 pang, in the island of Timor. True it is, as appears from the romantic narrative 

 of his adventures, that not to have perished a hundred times was due only to 

 the most astonishing good fortune. This fortune was denied to la Perouse and 

 his companions, though the boat in which they left Vanikoro but a few months 

 before was no doubt larger and better appointed than that of Bligh. 



In similar circumstances many others have succeeded in being saved. In 

 reading the stirring recital of their various perils, we readily perceive that in the 

 fate of la Perouse there is nothing enigmatical ; nor can the conclusion escape 



