LAPEROUSE AT OWH5THEE. 



515 



not to his discoveries: he arrived, on the 28th of May, at 

 Owhyhee, without once making land. "The aspect of the 

 island," he writes, "was charming. But the sea beat with such 

 violence upon the coast, that, like Tantalus, we could only long 

 for and devour with our eyes that which it was impossible for 

 us to reach." This prospect was aggravated by the sight of 

 one hundred and fifty canoes laden with pigs and fruit which put 

 out from the shore : forty of them were capsized in attempting 

 to come alongside while the frigates were under full sail. The 

 water was full of swimming savages, struggling pigs, and tempt- 

 ing cocoanuts ; but the necessity of making an anchorage before 

 nightfall compelled them to seek another portion of the island. 



On the 30th of May, Laperouse landed upon the island of 

 Mowee, where he found the savages mild, polite, and com- 

 mercially inclined. Exchanges of pigs and medals were made 

 with great success. Laperouse abstained from taking possession 

 of the island in the name of the King of France, — Cook not 

 having visited Mowee, — inasmuch as he considered European 

 usages in this respect extremely ridiculous. " Philosophers 

 must often have wept," he writes, "at seeing men, simply be- 

 cause they have cannon and bayonets, count sixty thousand of 

 their fellow-creatures as nothing, and look upon a land which 

 its inhabitants have moistened with their sweat and fertilized 

 with the bones of their ancestors for centuries as an object of 

 legitimate conquest." 



On the 23d of June, in latitude 60° north, Laperouse struck 

 the American coast : he recognised at once Behring's Mount 

 St. Elias, whose summit pierced the clouds. From this point 

 southward as far as Monterey, in Mexico, lay an extent of 

 coast which Cook had seen but not surveyed. The exploration 

 of this coast was a work essential to the interests of navigation 

 and of commerce; and, though the season only allowed him 

 three months, he undertook and executed it in a manner credit- 

 able to the navy of France He discovered a harbor that had 



