Kau Moala heard nothing of Edwards' visit, though he brought news of the visit of a ship to Futuna, and of an ineffectual attempt to take her—perhaps the visit of Schouten, whose account of the affray tallies closely with theirs even to the killing of six natives. The tradition was still fresh after 190 years. Edwards' visit, having brought no disasters on the natives, escaped the attention of the native poets and was forgotten.
[67-1] Native name Fataka. The Russian Captain Kroutcheff, who landed upon it in 1822, found it uninhabited.
[67-2] Kroutcheff placed it 41 minutes further west.
[68-1] This was Vanikoro in the Santa Cruz Group. It was probably seen by Mendaña in 1595, and again by Carteret in 1767, but the interest attached to it by Europeans, and particularly to Edwards' visit, lies in the undoubted fact that at that very time there were survivors of La Pérouse's ill-fated expedition upon it. If his search for the mutineers had been as keen at this part of his voyage as it was in the earlier portion, he would have been the means of rescuing them. The smoke he saw may well have been signal fires lighted by the castaways to attract his attention.
La Pérouse's ships were cast away in 1788, just three years before, shortly after the Commander had delivered his journals to Governor Phillip in Botany Bay for transmission to Europe. Their fate was unknown until Peter Dillon chanced upon a French swordhilt in Tucopia thirty-eight years later in 1826. Satisfying himself that they had been brought from Vanikoro, he persuaded the East India Company to place him in command of a search expedition. In 1827 he made a thorough examination of the island, and found the remains of the Boussole; the Astrolabe, according to the native account, having foundered in deep water. He found the clearing where the survivors had felled timber to build themselves a brig in which they sailed to meet a second shipwreck elsewhere, perhaps on the Great Barrier reef of Queensland. But two had been left, and of these one had died shortly before his visit, and the other had gone with the natives to another island leaving no trace behind him.
D'Entrecasteaux, when in search of La Pérouse in 1793, also passed within sight of the castaways.
D'Urville made a thorough examination of the island both in 1828 and 1838. The relics brought home by Dillon may be seen in the Gallerie de la Marine in the Louvre.
[69-1] This was the dangerous reef now known as Indispensable Reef, after the ship Indispensable commanded by Captain Wilkinson, who discovered it in 1790.
[69-2] It was, in fact, the mainland of New Guinea. The land East of Cape Rodney, comprising Orangerie, Table, and Cloudy Bays, lies so low and is so generally obscured with haze that on a dull day Edwards would not have seen it.
It is doubtful whether Edwards' Capes Rodney and Hood, are correctly placed in the modern charts. Our Cape Rodney is not a conspicuous headland, and it lies half a degree eastward of 212·14 W. Longitude, and 9′ South of 106·3° S. Latitude. Edwards' positions are usually so accurate that I cannot see why they should have been departed from. Our Cape Hood, on the other hand, is exactly in the position of his Cape Rodney, and is besides a very conspicuous wooded tongue of land. Beyond is another conspicuous point. Round Head, which corresponds in position with Edwards' Cape Hood. Mount Clarence, moreover, would not appear to lie between Capes Rodney and Hood until the former was out of sight astern. I think that Mount Clarence must have been hidden by clouds, and that Edwards' Mount Clarence was in reality the high cone in the Saroa district, which is a conspicuous feature on the coast line. A further indication that the day was hazy lies in the fact that Edwards did not see the great Owen Stanley Range which towers up 13,000 feet behind. Had he done so he would not have mistaken the mainland for a group of scattered islands. Hamilton does not call Mount Clarence an "island," but a "mountain." A further proof that Edwards' "Cape Hood" was Round Head is found in the remark "After passing Cape Hood the land appears lower, and to branch off about N.N.W., . . . for we saw no other land." This applies to Round Head, and to no other part of the coast.