Kerguelen himself only says that it is about 68° of E. longitude, par 68° de longitude.
[120]. Hitherto, we have only had occasion to supply defects, owing to Captain Cook’s entire ignorance of Kerguelen’s second voyage in 1773; we must now correct errors, owing to his very limited knowledge of the operations of the first voyage in 1772. The chart of the southern hemisphere, his only guide, having given him, as he tells us, the name of Cape St. Louis (or Cape Louis) as the most northerly promontory then seen by the French; and his own observations now satisfying him that no part of the main land stretched further N. than the left extreme now before him; from this supposed similarity of situation, he judged that his own perpendicular rock must be the Cape Lewis of the first discoverers. By looking upon our chart, we shall find Cape Louis lying upon a very different part of the coast; and by comparing this chart with that lately published by Kerguelen, it will appear, in the clearest manner, that the northern point now described by Captain Cook, is the very same to which the French have given the name of Cape François.
[121]. This right extreme of the coast, as it now showed itself to Captain Cook, seems to be what is represented on Kerguelen’s chart under the name of Cape Aubert. It may be proper to observe here, that all that extent of coast lying between Cape Louis and Cape François, of which the French saw very little during their first visit in 1772, and may be called the N. W. side of this land, they had it in their power to trace the position of in 1773, and have assigned names to some of its bays, rivers, and promontories, upon their chart.
[122]. Kerguelen’s Isle de Clugny.
[123]. Cape François, as already observed.
[124]. The observations of the French, round Cape François, remarkably coincide with Captain Cook’s in this paragraph; and the rocks and islands here mentioned by him, also appear upon their chart.
[125]. The (d), no doubt, is a contraction of the word Domino. The French Secretary of the Marine was then Monsieur de Boynes.
[126]. On perusing this paragraph of the Journal, it will be natural to ask, How could Monsieur de Boisguehenneu, in the beginning of 1772, leave an inscription, which, upon the very face of it, commemorates a transaction of the following year? Captain Cook’s manner of expressing himself here, strongly marks, that he made this supposition only for want of information to enable him to make any other. He had no idea that the French had visited this land a second time; and, reduced to the necessity of trying to accommodate what he saw himself, to what little he had heard of their proceedings, he confounds a transaction which we, who have been better instructed, know, for a certainty, belongs to the second voyage, with a similar one, which his chart of the Southern Hemisphere has recorded, and which happened in a different year, and at a different place.
The bay, indeed, in which Monsieur de Boisguehenneu landed, is upon the west side of this land, considerably to the south of Cape Louis, and not far from another more southerly promontory, called Cape Bourbon; a part of the coast which our ships were not upon. Its situation is marked upon our chart; and a particular view of the bay du Lion Marin (for so Boisguehenneu called it), with the soundings, is preserved by Kerguelen.
But if the bottle and inscription, found by Captain Cook’s people, were not left here by Boisguehenneu, by whom and when were they left? This we learn most satisfactorily, from the accounts of Kerguelen’s second voyage, as published by himself and Monsieur de Pagés, which present us with the following particulars: That they arrived on the west side of this land on the 14th of December, 1773; that, steering to the north-east, they discovered, on the 16th, the Isle de Réunion, and the other small islands as mentioned above; that, on the 17th, they had before them the principal land (which they were sure was connected with that seen by them on the 14th), and a high point of that land, named by them Cape François; that beyond this Cape the coast took a south-easterly direction, and behind it they found a bay, called by them Baie de l’Oiseau, from the name of their frigate; that they then endeavoured to enter it, but were prevented by contrary winds and blowing weather, which drove them off the coast eastward; but that, at last, on the 6th of January, Monsieur de Rosnevet, Captain of the Oiseau, was able to send his boat on shore into this bay, under the command of Monsieur de Rochegude, one of his officers, who took possession of that bay, and of all the country, in the name of the King of France, with all the requisite formalities.