COOK AND LA PEROUSE. 9 



way. Captain Edwards, who was sent in the Pandora to search for the Bounty, dis- 

 covered Anuda and Fataka Islands, but his ship was wrecked on a reef (Pandora Reef) 

 in Torres Strait. 



In 1796-97 Captain Wilson, during the missionary voyage in the Duff, dis- 

 covered the Gambier Islands and rediscovered the Duff Group. In the latter year there 

 was great activity in the Australian region when George Bass discovered Bass' Strait, 

 and with Matthew Flinders surveyed the east coast of Tasmania. Captain Flinders 

 continued this work in the Investigator but was captured by the French in 1804 and 

 kept a prisoner for six years. 



George Vancouver, another great Englishman who had been with Cook in his 

 last two voyages, explored the Pacific (1 792-1 795), especially on the north-west coast 

 of America, and had much to do with the conquest of the Hawaiian Group by Kameha- 

 meha. Only his untimely death soon after his return to England in 1795 prevented 

 his return to the Pacific for farther exploration. 



The Russians now took up the task and in 1804 Admiral Krusenstern sailed 

 around the world. From 1815 to 1818 Otto von Kotzebue followed in the Rurick dis- 

 covering a number of low islands in the Paumotus and farther north ; while in 1828 

 Liitke, in the Semavine, surveyed the Carolines. To this nation also belongs the voy- 

 age of Bellingshausen in 1819-21. 



England continued the work with Captain William Beechey in the Blossom, 

 1825-28; Sir Edward Belcher in the Sulphur, 1836-42; Captain Fitzroy (with whom 

 was Charles Darwin) from 1832 to 1836; and Sir James Ross with the Erebus and 

 Terror, 1841-43; all of the voyages adding largely to the knowledge of the Pacific. 



In 1838 the United States Government entrusted to Lieutenant (afterwards 

 Admiral ) Charles Wilkes the command of its first and greatest exploring expedition, and 

 under his direction surveys were made of the Hawaiian, Fiji, Samoan, Paumotu and other 

 groups, while the results to Natural Science were even greater than to geography. 



The French had not been idle, and mention should be made of the following 

 government voyages in addition to those already noticed. Louis de Freycinet with 

 the Uranie and Physicienne, 1817-20; Duperrey on the Coquille, 1822-25; Dumont 

 d'Urville on the Astrolabe, 1826-29; and du Petit Thouars on the I'euus, 1836-39, 

 made some geographical discoveries and corrected many mistakes of their predeces- 

 sors, but perhaps their harvest was rather in the realm of Natural History, and 

 indeed with these voyages the discovery of new lands ceased and the efforts of suc- 

 ceeding explorers were directed mainly to investigation of natural phenomena, as in 

 the Austrian voyage of the Noi'ara, 1857-59, of which the naturalist Dr. Karl von 

 Scherzer was historian; and the Italian voyage of the Magenta, 1865-68, whose story 

 was so well told by another naturalist, Dr. Enrico Hillyer Giglioli. The greatest of 



these scientific voyages was that of the English in the Challenger, 1872-76. The 



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