32 



lier period, and the news should reach me in 

 time, I would endeavour to return from Algiers 

 to a port in France, or Spain, to join the expedi- 

 tion. I renewed this promise on leaving Europe, 

 and wrote to Mr. Baudin, that if the government 

 persisted in sending him by Cape Horn, I would 

 endeavour to meet him, either at Monte Video, 

 Chili, or Lima, or wherever he should touch in 

 the Spanish Colonies. In consequence of this 

 engagement, I changed the plan of my journey, 

 on reading in the American papers, in 1801, that 

 the French expedition had sailed from the port of 

 Havre, to make the tour of the globe from east 

 to west. I hired a small vessel from Batabano, 

 in the Island of Cuba, to Portobello, and thence 

 crossed the isthmus to the coasts of the southern 

 ocean ; this mistake of a journalist led Mr. Bon- 

 pland and myself to travel eight hundred leagues 

 through a country we had no intention to visit. 

 It was only at Quito, that a letter from Mr. De- 

 lambre, perpetual secretary of the first class of 

 the institute, informed us that Captain Baudin 

 went by the Cape of Good Hope, without touch- 

 ing on the eastern or western coasts of America. 



I cannot recall without regret an expedition, 

 which is connected with several events of my 

 life, and the history of which has lately been 

 sketched by a * man of science, no less distin- 



* Mr. Perron, lost to the sciences at thirty-five years of 

 age, after a long and painful illness. See an interesting me- 



