[Footnote 98: This is the isle to which Kerguelen gave the name of Croy, or Crouy. Besides delineating it upon his chart, he has added a particular view of it, exactly corresponding with Captain Cook's account of its being of considerable height.--D.]
[Footnote 99: Kerguelen called this Isle Rolland, after the name of his own ship. There is also a particular view of it on the French chart.--D.]
[Footnote 100: The observations of the French and English navigators agree exactly as to the position of these smaller isles.--D.]
[Footnote 101: The situation of Kerguelen's Isle de Clugny, as marked on this chart, shews it to be the third high island seen by Captain Cook.--D.]
We did but just weather the island last mentioned. It is a high round rock, which was named Bligh's Cap. Perhaps this is the same that Monsieur de Kerguelen called the Isle of Rendezvous;[102] but I know nothing that can rendezvous at it, but fowls of the air; for it is certainly inaccessible to every other animal.
[Footnote 102: This isle, or rock, was the single point about which Captain Cook had received the least information at Teneriffe; and we may observe how sagacious he was in tracing it. What he could only speak of as probable, a comparison of his chart with that lately published by Kerguelen, proves to be certain; and if he had even read and copied what his predecessor in the discovery says of it, he could scarcely have varied his account of its shape. Kerguelen's words are, "Isle de Reunion, qui n'est qu'une Roche, nous servoit de Rendezvous, ou de point de ralliement; et ressemble à un coin de mire."--D.]
At eleven o'clock the weather began to clear up, and we immediately tacked, and steered in for the land. At noon, we had a pretty good observation, which enabled us to determine the latitude of Bligh's Cap, which is the northernmost island, to be 48° 29' S., and its longitude 68° 40' E.'[103] We passed it at three o'clock, standing to the S.S.E., with a fresh gale at W.
[Footnote 103: The French and English agree very nearly (as might be expected) in their accounts of the latitude of this island; but the observations by which they fix its longitude vary considerably. The pilot at Teneriffe made it only 64° 57' E. from Paris, which is about 67° 16' E. from London; or 1° 24' more westerly than Captain Cook's observations fix it. Monsieur de Pagès says it is 66° 47' E. from Paris, that is, 69° 6' E. from London, or twenty-six miles more easterly than it is placed by Captain Cook. Kerguelen himself only says that it is about 68° of E. longitude, par 68° de longitude.--D.]
Soon after we saw the land, of which we had a faint view in the morning; and at four o'clock it extended from S.E. 1/2 E., to S.W. by S., distant about four miles. The left extreme, which I judged to be the northern point of this land, called, in the French chart of the southern hemisphere, Cape St Louis,[104] terminated in a perpendicular rock of a considerable height; and the right one (near which is a detached rock) in a high indented point.[105] From this point the coast seemed to turn short round to the southward, for we could see no land to the westward of the direction in which it now bore to us, but the islands we had observed in the morning; the most southerly[106] of them lying nearly W. from the point, about two or three leagues distant.
[Footnote 104: 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 farther north than the left extreme now before him; from this supposed similarity of situation, he judged that his own perpendicular rock must be the Cape Louis of the first discoverers. By looking upon the chart originally published with this voyage, we shall find Cape Louis lying upon a different part of the coast; and by comparing this chart with that 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 Francois--D.]