REMNANTS OF THE WRECK.
In 1827, Dumont d'Urville was sent out by the French Government in the sloop-of-war Astrolabe to explore the great archipelagoes of the Pacific, with incidental authority to follow up any clue he might discover to the fate of Lapérouse. At Hobart Town, in Van Diemen's Land, he heard some account of the efforts made by Dillon, and determined to conclude what he had begun. He sailed at once for Manicolo, and, after examining the eastern coast of the island without success, proceeded to the western. Here he found numerous articles of European manufacture in possession of the savages, who steadfastly refused to say whence they had obtained them or to point out the scene of any catastrophe or shipwreck. At last, the offer of a piece of red cloth induced a painted islander to conduct a boat's crew to the spot which is now regarded as that at which the lamented commander and his vessels met their untimely fate. Scattered about in the bed of the sea, at the depth of about twenty feet, lay anchors, cannon, and sheets of lead and copper sheathing, completely corroded and disfigured by rust. They succeeded in recovering many of them from the water,—an anchor of fourteen hundred pounds, a small cannon coated with coral, and two brass swivels, in a good state of preservation. Thus possessed of evidence which after the lapse of forty years must be considered as conclusive, d'Urville erected near the anchorage a cenotaph to the memory of the hapless navigator. It was placed in a small grove, and consecrated by a salute of twenty-one guns and three volleys of musketry.
CONSECRATION OF THE CENOTAPH.
The islanders were now profuse in their explanations of the circumstances attending the calamity. As far as d'Urville could interpret their language and their pantomime, the ships struck upon the reef during a gale in the night. One speedily sank, only thirty of her crew escaping; the other remained for a time entire, but afterwards went to pieces, her whole crew having been saved. From her timbers they constructed a schooner, in which labor they occupied seven moons or months, and then sailed away and never returned. What befell them after their second embarkation, what was the fate of their daring little vessel,—if indeed any such was ever built,—no one has survived to tell. It is safe to believe that both vessels were lost upon the island of Vanikoro, now one of the archipelago of the New Hebrides. It is supposed that Lapérouse was the first European navigator that visited it, Dillon the second, and d'Urville the third.