FO RT Elt S J O U A L . 



at 



oiler tliese hints, coiifteiving ii Id be of tiie atmost irnpod- 

 ance to give any information derived from experience, 

 which may tend to enable navigators to overcome the ob- 

 stacles which nature seems designedly to have placed, to 

 deter mankind from all attempts to penetrate from the At- 

 lantic to the Pacific ocean. As various opinions have been 

 given on the subject, ray advice may differ from that of 

 others in several points : but as my measures have proved 

 successful in the end, and as my opinion is not founded on 

 mere conjecture and hypothesis, it is to be presumed that 

 it may deserve the attention of seamen, for whom alone it 

 is intended. 



In the first place, I must caution them against those er- 

 roneous expectations, which the opinion of La Perouse is 

 unhappily calculated to lead them into, and which, per- 

 haps, have proved fatal to many ships, by inducing their 

 commanders to believe that the passage round Cape Horn 

 is attended with no other difficulties than those to be met 

 with in any other high latitude ; thereby causing them to 

 neglect those necessary precautions, which the safety of 

 their ships, and the lives of those on board, required. He 

 siiys, to use his own words, " I doubled Cape Horn with 

 much more ease than I had dared to imagine ; I am now 

 convinced that this navigation is like that of all high lati- 

 tudes ; the difficulties which are expected to be met with, 

 are the effects of an old prejudice which should no longer 

 exist, and which the reading of Anson's voyage has not a 

 little contributed to preserve among seamen." On the 

 25th of January, La Perouse entered the Streights of Le 

 Maire, and on the 9th of February, he was in the Pacific, 

 in the parallel of the Streights of Magellan, making his 

 passage in fourteen days. On the 13th of February, I 

 passed the Streights of Le Maire, and was in the latitude 

 of those of Magellan on the 26th, making a passage of thir- 

 teen days, a little more than a month later in the season 

 than he passed the Cape ; and as my passage, against such 

 violent gales, was made in one day less than his, I am at 'a 

 loss to conceive what should have occasioned his delay. I 

 have the utmost respect for the memory of that celebrated 

 navigator, and regret that I should have cause to differ with 

 him in opinion in any point, particularly on one of so much 

 importance, as the doubhng of Cape Horn from the east. 



VOL, I, 11 



