EARLY SCIENTIFIC EXPEDITIONS TO CALIFORNIA. 187 
by sand-dunes the waves of the ocean broke with a sullen 
roar commented upon by the journalist of the voyage. The 
navigators were given a royal reception by the inhabitants of 
this outlying province of Spain. The guns of the presidio 
fired a salute and soldiers came off in their long boats to 
greet the strangers. In the course of a few days the 
explorers went to visit the ecclesiastical dignitaries of 
Carmel. They crossed a little plain where scattered trees 
sheltered the herds from the noon-day heat, ascended the 
hills, and the mission bells rang out their welcome; passing 
between the long rows of neophytes whose stolid faces mani- 
fested no surprise at this procession of Europeans, they 
found the church edifice lighted as on the occasion of the 
grandest festival and a hymn of thanksgiving was sung 
because of the happy success of the voyage. 
After ten days the expedition sailed away into the western 
seas in quest of strange people and strange lands. On the 
coast of Kamtchatka one of the scientific staff was sent over- 
land to France with the records of the expedition. At the 
Navigator Islands, De Langle, Captain of the Astrolabe, 
Lamanon, the naturalist, and many of the ship’s crew were 
massacred by the natives. Dispatches were again sent home 
from Botany Bay on the coast of New Zealand by English 
vessels. After this the expedition was never heard of again. 
With the loss of the ill-fated navigators in the South Seas, 
perished the major part of the scientific results of the expedi- 
tion, including the first botanical collection made in 
California, with the accompanying notes and drawings. 
However there was something saved. The packages of 
dispatches sent to France contained the journal kept by the 
distinguished commander, La Perouse, and monographs by 
members of the scientific corps on various subjects, geogra- 
phical, anthropological, pathological, entomological, and 
botanical. The monographs were necessarily more or less 
fragmentary and incomplete. The foresight of the 
commander is best evidenced in the fact that he lost no 
opportunity of dispatching his journal home to France, as he 
