FIRST VIEW OF THE PACIFIC. 437 



for the object of my visit to Lima was twofold to observe the 

 transit of Mercury over the solar disk, and to fulfil an engagement 

 made with Captain Baudin before I left Paris, to join him in a 

 voyage of circumnavigation which was to take place as soon as the 

 Government of the French Kepublic could furnish the requisite 

 funds. 



Whilst we were in the Antilles, North American newspapers 

 announced that the two Corvettes, Le Gre'ographe and Le Naturaliste, 

 would sail round Cape Horn and touch at Callao de Lima. On 

 receiving this intelligence at Havana, where I then was, after having 

 completed my Orinoco journey, I relinquished my original plan of 

 going through Mexico to the Philippines, and hastened to engage a 

 vessel to convey me from the Island of Cuba to Cartagena de Indias. 

 Baudin' s Expedition, however, took quite a different route from that 

 which was announced and expected ; instead of sailing round Cape 

 Horn, as had been designed when it had been intended that Bon- 

 pland and myself should form part of it, it sailed round the Cape of 

 Good Hope. One of the two objects of my Peruvian journey and 

 of our last passage over the Chain of the Andes failed ; but on the 

 other hand I had, at the critical moment, the rare good fortune of a 

 perfectly clear day, during a very unfavorable season of the year, 

 on the misty coast of Low Peru. I observed the passage of Mer- 

 cury over the Sun at Callao, an observation which has become of 

 some importance towards the exact determination of the longitude 

 of Lima, ( 20 ) and of all the south-western part of the New Conti- 

 nent. Thus, in the intricate relations and graver circumstances of 

 life, there may often be found associated with disappointment, a germ 

 of compensation. 



37 : 



