How very little was known, with any precision, about the operations of Kerguelen, when Captain Cook sailed in 1776, may be inferred from the following paragraph of his instructions: “You are to proceed in search of some islands said to have been lately seen by the French in the latitude of 48° S., and in the meridian of Mauritius.”[[109]] This was, barely, the amount of the very indefinite and imperfect information, which Captain Cook himself had received from Baron Plettenberg at the Cape of Good Hope, in November 1772[[110]]; in the beginning of which year Kerguelen’s first voyage had taken place.
The Captain, on his return homeward, in March 1775, heard, a second time, something about this French discovery at the Cape, where he met with Monsieur Crozet, who very obligingly communicated to him a chart of the southern hemisphere, wherein were delineated not only his own discoveries, but also that of Captain Kerguelen.[[111]] But what little information that chart could convey, was still necessarily confined to the operations of the first voyage; the chart here referred to, having been published in France in 1773; that is, before any intelligence could possibly be conveyed from the southern hemisphere of the result of Kerguelen’s second visit to this new land; which we now know happened towards the close of the same year.
Of these latter operations, the only account (if that can be called an account which conveys no particular information) received by Captain Cook from Monsieur Crozet was, that a later voyage had been undertaken by the French, under the command of Captain Kerguelen, which had ended much to the disgrace of that commander.[[112]]
What Crozet had not communicated to our author, and what we are sure, from a variety of circumstances, he had never heard of from any other quarter, he missed an opportunity of learning at Teneriffe. He expresses his being sorry, as we have just read, that he did not know sooner that there was on board the frigate an officer who had been with Kerguelen, as he might have obtained from him more interesting information about this land than its situation. And, indeed, if he had conversed with that officer he might have obtained information more interesting than he was aware of; he might have learnt that Kerguelen had actually visited this southern land a second time, and that the little isle of which he then received the name and position from the Chevalier de Borda, was a discovery of this later voyage. But the account conveyed to him being, as the reader will observe, unaccompanied with any date, or other distinguishing circumstance, he left Teneriffe, and arrived on the coasts of Kerguelen’s Land, under a full persuasion that it had been visited only once before. And, even with regard to the operations of that first voyage, he had nothing to guide him, but the very scanty materials afforded to him by Baron Plettenberg and Monsieur Crozet.
The truth is, the French seem, for some reason or other, not surely founded on the importance of Kerguelen’s discovery, to have been very shy of publishing a full and distinct account of it. No such account had been published while Captain Cook lived. Nay, even after the return of his ships in 1780, the gentleman who obligingly lent his assistance to give a view of the prior observations of the French, and to connect them on the same chart with those of our author, though his assiduity in procuring geographical information can be equalled only by his readiness in communicating it, had not, it should seem, been able to procure any materials for that purpose, but such as mark the operations of the first French voyage; and even for these, he was indebted to a MS. drawing.
But this veil of unnecessary secrecy is at length drawn aside. Kerguelen himself has, very lately, published the journal of his proceedings in two successive voyages in the years 1772 and 1773; and has annexed to his Narrative a chart of the coasts of this land, as far as he had explored them in both voyages. Monsieur de Pagés also, much about the same time, favoured us with another account of the second voyage, in some respects fuller than Kerguelen’s own, on board whose ship he was then an officer.
From these sources of authentic information we are enabled to draw every necessary material to correct what is erroneous, and to illustrate what, otherwise, would have remained obscure, in this part of Captain Cook’s Journal. We shall take occasion to do this in separate notes on the passages as they occur, and conclude this tedious, but, it is hoped, not unnecessary detail of facts, with one general remark, fully expressive of the disadvantages our author laboured under. He never saw that part of the coast upon which the French had been in 1772; and he never knew that they had been upon another part of it in 1773, which was the very scene of his own operations. Consequently, what he knew of the former voyage, as delineated upon Crozet’s chart, only served to perplex and mislead his judgment; and his total ignorance of the latter, put it out of his power to compare his own observations with those then made by Kerguelen; though we, who are better instructed, can do this, by tracing the plainest marks of coincidence and agreement.
[109]. See the Instructions in the Introduction.
[110]. See Vol. III. p. 36.
[111]. Vol. IV. p. 243.