LAPÉROUSE'S DISASTER AT FRENCHPORT.
On the 13th of September, Lapérouse arrived at Monterey, after a cursory examination of the coast, determining its directions, but without exploring its sinuosities and inlets. The Spanish commander of the fort and of the two Californias had received orders from Mexico to extend all possible hospitality to the adventurers. He executed his instructions to the letter, sending immense quantities of fresh beef, eggs, milk, vegetables, and poultry on board, and then declining to hand in the bill. On the 24th, every thing being in readiness, the vessels started upon their route across the Pacific, the intention of Lapérouse being to make for Macao, on the Chinese coast. He hoped on his way to make many discoveries of islands upon this unknown sea,—the Spaniards, in their single beaten track from Acapulco to Manilla, never varying more than thirty miles to the north or south of their usual and average latitude. He also hoped not to find, in the longitude marked against it, a very doubtful island named Nostra Señora de la Gorta, that he might erase it from the charts. This he was unable to do, for the winds did not allow him to pass within a hundred miles of its supposed position. When half-way across the Pacific, he discovered a naked, barren rock, to which he gave the name of Necker, after the French Minister of Finance. He arrived at Macao on the 3d of January, 1787, after a voyage entirely free from incident or adventure. He spent three months here and at Manilla, and finally, on the 10th of April, started for the scene of the most important portion of his mission,—the coasts of Tartary and of Japan,—the waters which separate the mainland of the former from the islands of the latter being very imperfectly known to Europeans.
Early in June, Lapérouse entered a sea never before ploughed by a European keel; and, as it was only known from Japanese or Corean charts, published by the Jesuits, it was his first object either to verify their surveys or to correct their errors. As the Jesuits travelled and made their calculations by land, Lapérouse added hydrographic details and observations to their data, which he found quite generally correct. His voyage in these latitudes set many doubts at rest. After several months spent in these labors, the expedition arrived at Petropaulowski in September of the same year. The officers were grievously disappointed in not finding letters and despatches from France, but one evening, during a Kamschatka gala ball, the arrival of a courier from Okhotsk was announced, and the ball was interrupted that the mail might be opened and delivered. The news was favorable for all, though, after so long an absence, it was natural that there should be evil tidings for some among so many. Lapérouse learned that he had been promoted in rank; and the Governor of Okhotsk caused this event to be celebrated by a grand discharge of artillery. M. de Lesseps, the interpreter attached to the expedition, was detached from it at this point by Lapérouse and sent across the continent by way of Okhotsk, Irkoutsk, and Tobolsk to St. Petersburg, and thence to Paris, with the ships' letters and Lapérouse's journal. It is from this journal, published at Paris, that we have obtained the details of the expedition as we have thus far chronicled them.
The track of Lapérouse was now directly south, through the heart of the Pacific Ocean. He touched, on the 9th of December, at Maouna, one of Navigator's Isles. The vessels were at once surrounded by a hundred or more canoes filled with pigs and fruit, which the natives would only exchange for glass beads, which in their eyes were what diamonds are to Europeans. Delangle, the captain of the Astrolabe, went ashore with the watering party. The islanders made no objection to their landing their casks; but as the tide receded, leaving the boats high and dry upon the beach, they became troublesome, and finally forced Delangle to a trial of his muskets. For this they took a sanguinary vengeance. Delangle was killed by a single blow from a club, as was Lamanon, the naturalist. Eleven marines were savagely murdered, either with stones or heavy sticks, while twenty were seriously wounded. The rest escaped by swimming. Lapérouse did not feel himself sufficiently strong to attempt reprisals. The natives hurled stones with such force and accuracy that they were more than a match for as many musketeers. Besides, he had lost thirty-two men and two boats, and his situation generally was such that the slightest mischance would now compel him to disarm one frigate in order to refit the other. It was late in January, 1788, that he arrived at Botany Bay, in New Holland,—the last place in which he was ever seen, alive or dead.
His last letter to the Minister of Marine was dated at Botany Bay, the 7th of February. In this he stated the route by which he intended to return home, and the dates of his anticipated arrivals at various points. His plan was to visit the Friendly Islands, New Guinea, and Van Diemen's Land, and to be at the Isle of France, near Madagascar, at the beginning of December. His letter arrived in due course at Paris, where the public mind was too much agitated by the throes of revolution to pay much heed to matters of such remote interest. At last, in the year 1791, the Society of Natural History called the attention of the Constituent Assembly to the fate of Lapérouse and his companions. The hope of recovering at least some wreck of an expedition undertaken to promote the sciences induced the Assembly to send two other ships to Botany Bay, with orders to steer the same course from that place that Lapérouse had traced out for himself. Some of his followers, it was thought, might have escaped from the wreck, and might be confined on a desert island or thrown upon some savage coast. Two ships were therefore fitted out, and placed under the command of Rear-Admiral d'Entrecasteaux.
The ships returned in two years, without having obtained the slightest clue to the fate of Lapérouse: their commander had died of scurvy at Java. At the Friendly Islands, the first landing that Lapérouse was to make after leaving Botany Bay, the inhabitants, who remembered Cook perfectly, and who knew the difference between French and English, declared that Lapérouse had not visited them. As they were the most civilized and hospitable of all the Pacific islanders, it was thought improbable that he had ever sailed as far as the very first station of his route,—an opinion which was confirmed by finding no trace of him at any subsequent point of his intended track. No floating remnants of wood or iron work were anywhere discovered; and the public mind gradually settled into the conviction that the two unfortunate vessels were lost upon their passage from Botany Bay to the Friendly Islands. The cause was supposed to be neither fire, nor leakage, nor the effects of a stress of weather,—causes which could hardly be fatal at the same moment to two vessels. It was generally believed that, as the Boussole and Astrolabe were accustomed to keep as near each other as possible during the night, they both simultaneously dashed upon a hidden quicksand. In this manner, one vessel would not have been able to take warning in time by the disaster of the other.
In the year 1813, one Captain Dillon, in the service of the British East India Company, putting in at one of the Feejee Islands, found there two foreign sailors, one of whom was a Prussian, the other a Lascar. At their request he transported them to the neighboring island of Tucopia, where he left them, the natives expressing no hostility toward them nor objections to their stay. In 1826,—thirteen years afterward,—Captain Dillon again touched at Tucopia, where he found them comfortable and contented. The Lascar sold the armorer a silver sword-hilt of French manufacture and bearing a cipher engraved upon it. It resulted from Dillon's inquiries that the natives had obtained many articles of iron and other metals from a distant island named Manicolo, where, as they said, two European ships had been wrecked forty years before. It immediately occurred to Dillon that this circumstance was connected with the loss of the vessel of Lapérouse, whose fate still remained involved in uncertainty. Aware of the interest felt in Europe in the fate of the unfortunate navigator, he sailed with the Prussian to Manicolo, but, being prevented from landing by the surf and the coral reef, bore away to New Zealand and proceeded on his voyage.