cheff, who landed
upon it in 1822, found it uninhabited.

[67-2] Kroutcheff placed it 41 minutes further west.

[68-1] This was Vanikoro in the Santa Cruz Group. It was probably seen by
Mendana in 1595, and again by Carteret in 1767, but the interest attached
to it by Europeans, and particularly to Edwards' visit, lies in the
undoubted fact that at that very time there were survivors of La
Perouse's ill-fated expedition upon it. If his search for the mutineers
had been as keen at this part of his voyage as it was in the earlier
portion, he would have been the means of rescuing them. The smoke he saw
may well have been signal fires lighted by the castaways to attract his
attention.

La Perouse's ships were cast away in 1788, just three years before,
shortly after the Commander had delivered his journals to Governor
Phillip in Botany Bay for transmission to Europe. Their fate was unknown
until Peter Dillon chanced upon a French swordhilt in Tucopia
thirty-eight years later in 1826. Satisfying himself that they had been
brought from Vanikoro, he persuaded the East India Company to place him
in command of a search expedition. In 1827 he made a thorough examination
of the island, and found the remains of the _Boussole_; the _Astrolabe_,
according to the native account, having foundered in deep water. He found
the clearing where the survivors had felled timber to build themselves a
brig in which they sailed to meet a second shipwreck elsewhere, perhaps
on the Great Barrier reef of Queensland. But two had been left, and of
these one had died shortly before his visit, and the other had gone with
the natives to another island leaving no trace behind him.

D'Entrecasteaux, when in search of La Perouse in 1793, also passed within
sight of the castaways.

D'Urville made a thorough examination of the island both in 1828 and
1838. The relics brought home by Dillon may be seen in the Gallerie de la
Marine in the Louvre.

[69-1] This was the dangerous reef now known as Indispensable Reef, after
the ship _Indispensable_ commanded by Captain Wilkinson, who discovered
it in 1790.

[69-2] It was, in fact, the mainland of New Guinea. The land East of Cape
Rodney, comprising Orangerie, Table, and Cloudy Bays, lies so low and is
so generally obscured with haze that on a dull day Edwards would not have
seen it.

It is doubtful whether Edwards' Capes Rodney and Hood, are correctly
placed in the modern charts. Our Cape Rodney is not a