LAPÉROUSE.
CHAPTER XLVI.
LOUIS XVI. AND THE SCIENCE OF NAVIGATION—VOYAGE OF LAPÉROUSE—ARRIVAL AT EASTER ISLAND—ADDRESS OF THE NATIVES—OWHYHEE—TRADE AT MOWEE—SURVEY OF THE AMERICAN COAST—A REMARKABLE INLET—DISTRESSING CALAMITY—SOJOURN AT MONTEREY—RUN ACROSS THE PACIFIC—THE JAPANESE WATERS—ARRIVAL AT PETROPAULOWSKI—AFFRAY AT NAVIGATORS' ISLES—LAPÉROUSE ARRIVES AT BOTANY BAY, AND IS NEVER SEEN AGAIN, ALIVE OR DEAD—VOYAGES MADE IN SEARCH OF HIM—D'ENTRECASTEAUX—DILLON—D'URVILLE—DISCOVERY OF NUMEROUS RELICS OF THE SHIPS AT MANICOLO—THEORY OF THE FATE OF LAPÉROUSE—ERECTION OF A MONUMENT TO HIS MEMORY.
Louis XVI., King of France, became at this period deeply interested in the study of the science of geography and navigation. Upon the perusal of the voyages, discoveries, and services of Cook, he conceived the idea of admitting the French nation to a share in the glory which the English were reaping from maritime adventure and exploration. He drew up a plan of campaign with his own hand, ordered the two frigates Boussole and Astrolabe to be prepared for sea, and gave the command of the expedition to Jean-François Galaup de la Pérouse,—better known as Lapérouse. The vessels were supplied with every accessory of which they could possibly have need. The instructions and recommendations received from the Academy of Sciences fill a quarto volume of four hundred pages. The fleet sailed from Brest on the 1st of August, 1785, and arrived at Concepçion, in Chili, late in February, 1786.
After a short stay here, the two frigates again put to sea, and, early in April, anchored in Cook's Bay, in Easter Island. Here the two commanders landed, accompanied by about seventy persons, twelve of whom were marines armed to the teeth. Five hundred Indians awaited them at the shore, the greater part of them naked, painted, and tattooed, others wearing pendent bunches of odoriferous herbs about their loins, and others still being covered with pieces of white and yellow cloth. None of them were armed, and, as the boats touched the land, they advanced with the utmost alacrity to aid the strangers in their disembarkation. The latter marked out a circular space, where they set up a tent, and enjoined it strongly upon the islanders not to intrude upon this enclosure. The number of the natives had now increased to eight hundred, one hundred and fifty of whom were women. While the latter would seek, by caresses and agreeable pantomime, to withdraw the attention of the Frenchmen from passing events, the men would slyly pick their pockets. Innumerable handkerchiefs were pilfered in this way; and the thieves, emboldened by success, at last seized their caps from their heads and rushed off with them. It was noticed that the chiefs were the most adroit and successful plunderers, and that though, for appearance' sake, they sometimes ran after an offender, promising to bring him back, it was evident that they were running as slowly as they could, and that their object was rather to facilitate than to prevent their escape. Lapérouse was not saved from spoliation by his rank: a polite savage, having assisted him over an obstruction in the path, removed his chapeau and fled with the utmost rapidity. On re-embarking to return to the ships, only three persons had handkerchiefs, and only two had caps. Lapérouse stayed but a day on this island, having nothing to gain and every thing to lose. There was no fresh water to be found, the natives drinking sea-water, like the albatrosses of Cape Horn. In return for the hospitality with which they had been received, Lapérouse caused several fertile spots to be sown with beets, cabbages, wheat, carrots, and squashes, and even with orange, lemon, and cotton seeds. "In short," says Lapérouse, "we loaded them with presents, overwhelmed with caresses the young and children at the breast; we sowed their fields with useful grains; we left kids, sheep, and hogs to multiply upon their island; we asked nothing in exchange; and yet they robbed us of our hats and handkerchiefs, and threw stones at us when we left." The following reflection, which concludes Lapérouse's account of Easter Island, could only have proceeded from a Frenchman:—"I decided to depart during the night, flattering myself that when, upon the return of day, they should find our vessels gone, they would attribute our departure to our just resentment at their conduct, and that this conclusion might render them better members of society."
Lapérouse now sailed to the northeast, intending to touch at the Sandwich Islands,—a distance of five thousand miles. He hoped to make some discovery during this long stretch, and placed sailors in the tops, animated by the promise of a prize to discover as many islands as possible. In the furtherance of this design, the two frigates sailed ten miles apart,—by which the visible horizon was considerably extended. Lapérouse was destined, however, to owe his celebrity to his misfortunes and 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 tempting cocoanuts; but the necessity of making an anchorage before nightfall compelled them to seek another portion of the island.
On the 30th of May, Lapérouse landed upon the island of Mowee, where he found the savages mild, polite, and commercially inclined. Exchanges of pigs and medals were made with great success. Lapérouse 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 because 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, Lapérouse 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 creditable to the navy of France. He discovered a harbor that had escaped the notice of preceding navigators. This harbor or bay seems to have been a remarkable place. The water is unfathomable, and is surrounded by precipices which rise perpendicularly from the water's edge into the regions of eternal snow. Not a blade of grass, not a green leaf, grows in this desolate and sterile spot. No breeze blows upon the surface of the bay: its tranquillity is never troubled except by the fall of enormous masses of ice from numerous overhanging peaks. The air is so still and the silence so profound that the noise made by a bird in laying an egg in the hollow of a rock is distinctly heard at the distance of a mile and a half. To this wonderful bay Lapérouse gave the name of Frenchport.
A painful accident occurred as the vessels, after a somewhat prolonged stay, were about departing from the spot. Three boats, manned by twenty-seven men and officers, were sent to make soundings in the bay, in order to complete the chart of the survey. They had strict orders to avoid a certain dangerous current, but became involved in it unawares. Two boats' crews perished, consisting of twenty-one men, the greater part of them under twenty-five years of age. Two brothers, by the name of Laborde, whom their superior officers never separated, but always sent together on missions of peril, were among the victims of the disaster. A monument was erected to their memory, and a record buried in a bottle beneath it. The inscription was thus conceived:—
"At the entrance of this bay twenty-one brave sailors perish'd:
Whoever you may be, mingle your tears with ours."