crowd, waiting for him upon the beach, with an immense quantity of fruit and hogs,' and the appearance of the women and children among the Indians, determined him on landing here. The casks were accordingly put on shore. M. de la Pérouse thus relates the melancholy sequel:

The number of canoes, which had traded with us in the morning, was so considerable, that we scarcely perceived its diminution in the afternoon; and I gave myself credit for keeping them employed on board, in hopes that our boats would be so much the quieter on shore. Great was my mistake! M. de Langle's situation became every moment more and more embarrassing. He found means however, with the assistance of Messieurs de Vaujuas, Boutin, Colinet, and Gobien, to ship his water; but the bay was almost dry, and he could not hope to get the long-boats off before four in the afternoon. He stepped into them however, as well as his detachment, and took post in the bow with his musket and musketeers, forbidding any one to fire before he should give the word. He began however to be sensible that he should soon be forced to do so. Already the stones began to fly, and the Indians who were only up to their knees in water, surrounded the long-boats at less than six feet distance, the soldiers, who were embarked, making vain efforts to keep them off. If the fear of commencing hostilities, and of being accused of barbarity, had not withheld M. de Langle, he would doubtless have given orders to fire a volley of musketry and swivels, which would not have failed to put the multitude to flight; but he flattered himself that he should be able to keep them in check without effusion of blood; and fell the victim of his humanity. In a very short time a shower of stones, thrown from a small distance with as much force as from a sling, struck almost every one of those who were in the long-beat. M. de Langle had only time to fire his two shot, when he was knocked down, and unfortunately fell over the larboard side of the boat, where more than two hundred Indians immediately massacred him with clubs and stones. When he was dead they tied him by the arm to one of the row-locks of the long-boat, in order, no doubt, to make surer of spoil. The long-boat of the Boussole, commanded by M. Boutin, was aground at two toises from that of the Astrolable, leaving in a parallel line between them a little channel unoccupied by the Indians. It was by that channel that all the wounded, who had the good fortune not to fall on the other side, saved themselves by swimming. They got on board the barges, which, having most fortunately been kept afloat, were the means of saving forty nine persons out of the sixty-one of which the party

consisted.'

In less than five minutes, not a single man remained in either of the long-boats; all who were able having made their escape to the barges, which were afloat. The water-casks were thrown overboard to make room for the additional numbers, and to render the boats more manageable. The ammunition being all exhausted, the two barges retreated from the shore, REV. DEC. 1798.

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and at, five o'clock returned to the ships. No suspicion had been there entertained of what was transacting on shore; and when the boats arrived, there were still more than a hundred canoes close to the frigates. M. de la Pérouse found some difficulty in restraining the vengeance of his crew, who of their own accord began to cast loose the guns: but he confined the manifestation of his anger to the firing of a great gun, loaded only with powder, over the canoes, as a warning for them to depart. A small boat likewise came off from the shore, which doubtless informed them of what had happened; for, in a short time afterward, not a canoe remained in sight.

This event, considering all the circumstances, is as extraordinary as any that we find in history. That sixty-one armed Europeans, in a situation in which they could not be surrounded, should be completely overcome by a savage multitude, armed only with clubs and stones, who had never before seen fire-arms, and who were wholly ignorant of their use and effect, is really surprising. It is not to be doubted that the ignorance of the Indians, in this respect, was one of the principal causes of the success of their attack, indeed of the attack itself; for it must greatly have prevented their dread of consequences. Many of the Indians must have fallen by the firearms, (M. de la Pérouse in his correspondence says 30,) but the knowlege of this could not be sufficiently spread to have had much effect during the battle. The great forbearance of M. de Langle and his companions was likewise another cause of their defeat; and it is peculiarly to be lamented, when men fall a sacrifice to their own virtue. It had been, and very humanely, a system which these commanders had prescribed to themselves, that not a single Indian should lose his life by their means, while they could avoid measures of offence; the consequence of which humane determination, in this instance, was that it gave the Indians an opportunity of approaching so close before any attempt was made to repel them, that the means of resistance lost the greater part of their efficacy. Yet it should have been considered that the confidence, which the Indians had shewn in the superiority of their bodily strength, rendered it the more necessary to resent the very first aggression.

The narrative of M. de Vaujuas, an officer who accompanied M. de Langle, says that the Casks were filled with water and put quietly into the boats: that M. de Langle intended to have remained a little longer to traffic for provisions: but that, the natives becoming more troublesome, he gave orders to re-imbark. In the mean time, (and this, M. de Vaujuas thinks, was the first cause of the misfortune,)

"He made a present of a few beads to a sort of chiefs, who had helped to keep off the inhabitants. We were, however, certain, that this police was a mere mockery, and that, if these pretended chiefs had really any authority, it extended to a very small number of individuals. The captain's presents, distributed to five or six persons, excited the discontent of all the rest. From that moment a general clamour arose, and we were no longer able to keep them quiet. They suffered us, however, to get into our boats; but a part of them stepped into the water in pursuit of us, while the others picked up stones upon the beach.

"As the long-boats were aground at a little distance from the strand, we were obliged in our way to them to pass through the water up to our waists; and in so doing several of the soldiers wet [wetted] their arms. It was in this critical situation that the horrible scene began which I am about to narrate. Scarcely were we in the long-boats, when M. de Langle gave orders to shove them off, and to weigh the grapnel; but this several of the most robust islanders opposed by laying hold of the rope. The captain, witness of their resistance, seeing the tumult increase, and perceiving the stones reach him, tried to intimidate the savages by firing a musket in the air; but, so far from being frightened, they made it the signal of a general at tack. Immediately a shower of stones, hurled with equal force and celerity, came pouring upon us; the fight began on both sides, and soon became general. Those whose muskets were in a serviceable state brought several of the infuriated Indians to the ground; but the others were by no means dismayed, and seemed to combat with redoubled vigour. A part of them came close up to the long-boats, while the rest, to the number of six or seven hundred, continued to stone us in the most dreadful and murderous manner.”

Besides the twelve persons who were killed, twenty others were wounded, some of them dangerously. M. de Lamanon, naturalist, was among the slain.-During the two following days, M. de la Pérouse remained off Maouna in search of anchorage, but could not find any near enough to the shore to protect the boats in an attempt to land for without the support of the ships, the remaining boats (the launches being both lost) were not sufficient to carry, at one time, a party large enough to make good a landing, if opposed.

On the 14th, they stood towards Oyolava, another island, in sight of Maouna to the W. N.W. As they approached, great numbers of canoes came to the ships, bringing provisions for exchange. These people had the same partiality for glass beads, that had been manifested by those at the island of Maouna. The following is part of the description given of Oyolava by M. de la Pérouse:

At four o'clock in the afternoon, we brought to abreast of perhaps the largest village that exists in any island of the South Sea, or rather opposite a very extensive inclined plain, covered with houses

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from the summit of the mountains to the water-side. These mountains are nearly in the middle of the island, whence the ground descends with a gentle declivity, and presents to ships an amphitheatre covered with trees, huts, and verdure. We saw the smoke rise from the interior of the village as from the midst of a great city s while the sea was covered with canoes, all of which endeavoured to approach our vessels, several of them being paddled along by idle gazers, who, having nothing to sell, went round and round our frigates, and appeared to have no object in view, but to enjoy the spectacle we afforded them.'

The natives of the Navigators' Islands resemble in many respects the Friendly Islanders. The custom of cutting off two joints of the little finger, M. de la Pérouse says in one part of the narrative, is utterly unknown at the Navigators' Islands:" but, in a preceding part, he had said, in the Islands of Navigators, I only perceived two individuals who had suffered that operation. The language he observed to be a dialect of the same, and derived from the Malay. On this subject, M. de la P. has given a short dissertation, in a manner not unlike that of Kampfer in his endeavour to trace the origin of the Japanese.

It is well known that the Tagayan, the Talgal, and the generality of languages spoken in the Phillippines, are derived from the Malay; a language more diffused than were those of the Greeks and Romans, and common to the numerous tribes, that inhabit the islands of the great Pacific Ocean. It appears to me evident, that all these different nations are the progeny of Malay colonies, which, in some age extremely remote, conquered the islands they inhabit. I should not even wonder, if the Chinese and Egyptians, whose antiquity is so much vaunted, were mere moderns in comparison of the Malays. But however this may be, I am satisfied that the aborigines of the Phillippine Islands, Formosa, New Guinea, New Britain, the New Hebrides, the Friendly Islands, &c. in the southern he misphere, and those of the Marianna and Sandwich islands in the northern, were that race of woolly-headed men still found in the interior of the islands of Luconia and Formosa. They were not to be subjugated in New Guinea, New Britain, and the New Hebrides, but being overcome in the more eastern islands, which were too small to afford them a retreat in the centre, they mixed with the conquering nation. Thence has resulted a race of very black men, whose colour is still several shades deeper than that of certain families of the country, probably, because the latter have made it a point of honour to keep their blood unmixed. I was struck with these two very distinct races in the Islands of Navigators, and cannot attribute to them any other origin.'

In some other respects, M. de la Pérouse has given free scope to his fancy.It is (says he) by taming birds that the natives of the Navigators' Islands charm away the tdium that results from their idle mode of life." This remark

should

should rather apply to an effeminate and indolent people; a character that is not to be attributed to those islanders.

The unfortunate transaction at Maouna occasioned a slight alteration in Ma de la Pérouse's plans. On leaving the Navigators' Islands, he determined not to anchor any where until he arrived at Botany Bay, where he proposed to put together the frame of a new long-boat, which he had brought with him from France. They now passed in sight of Traitor's Island, of the Friendly Islands, and others; and the Commodore settled the position of some which were not before well ascertained, but had no intercourse with the natives, except that a few canoes visited the ships. At Norfolk Island, the surf was too great for his boats to land. On the 23d of January 1788, he made the coast of New Holland, and on the 26th anchored in Botany Bay; at the very time that Governor Phillip, with the whole colony embarked under his direction, was sailing out of the bay, in order to occupy the present station of the settlement at Port Jackson.

Here finishes all that has been received of the Journal of M. de la Pérouse but from extracts published from his correspondence with the Minister of the Marine, and with M. Fleurieu, we may collect the plan which he proposed to pursue on leaving Botany Bay. In a letter dated Sept. 21, 1787, from Avatscha, he writes that his purpose was to be at New Zealand by the 20th of January 1788: thence to sail to the northward, to visit New Caledonia, the Terre des Arsacides, and other islands. At the end of July, (says he,) I shall pass between New Guinea and New Holland, by a different channel from that of the Endeavour; provided, however, that such a one exist. During the months of August, September, and part of October, I shall visit the gulph of Carpentaria, and the coast of New Holland, but in such a way that it may be possible for me to get to the northward, and to arrive at the beginning of December, 1788, at the Isle of France.' In a letter of a posterior date, having received orders from France, he says that he shall make no other alteration in the before-mentioned plan, than that of going to Botany Bay in New Holland, instead of going to New Zealand. From Botany Bay, in February 1788, he wrote, that the misfortune at Navigators' Islands should occasion no change in the plan of the remainder of the voyage. I have still (says he) a great many interesting things to do, and very mischievous people to visit.-I shall sail from Botany Bay on the 15th of March, and shall take care to lose no time till the month of December, when I expect to arrive at the Isle of France. There is little probability that it will ever appear

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