From Bonthain to Batavia, and Cape of Good Hope
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After he was gone, and we had made sail, I went upon the deck, where my Lieutenant asked me, if my visitor had entertained me with an account of his voyage. This led me to tell him the general purport of our conversation, upon which he assured me that the tale I had heard was a fiction for, says he, the boat's crew could not keep their secret so well as their officer, but after a little conversation told one of our people, who was born at Quebec, and spoke French, that they had been round the globe as well as we. This naturally excited a general curiosity, and with a very little difficulty we learnt that they had sailed from Europe in company with another ship, which, wanting some repair, had been left at the isle of France; that they had attempted to pass the Streight of Magellan the first summer, but not being able, had gone back, and wintered in the river De la Plata; that the summer afterwards they had been more successful, and having passed the Streight, spent two months at the island of Juan Fernandes. My Lieutenant told me also, that a boy in the French boat said he had been upon that island two years, and that while he was there, an English frigate put into the road, but did not anchor, mentioning the time as well as he could recollect, by which it appeared that the frigate he had seen was the Swallow. On the boy's being asked how he came to be so long upon the island of Juan Fernandes, he said that he had been taken upon the Spanish coast in the West Indies in a smuggling party, and sent thither by the Spaniards; but that by the French ship, in whose boat he came on board us, having touched there, he had regained his liberty. After having received this information from my Lieutenant, I could easily account for M. Bougainville's having made a tack to speak to me, and for the conversation and behaviour of my visitor; but I was now more displeased at the questions he had asked me than before, for if it was improper for him to communicate an account of his voyage to me, it was equally improper for me to communicate an account of my voyage to him; and I thought an artful attempt to draw me into a breach of my obligation to secrecy, while be imposed upon me by a fiction that he might not violate his own, was neither liberal nor just. As what the boat's crew told my people, differs in several particulars from the account printed by M. Bougainville, I shall not pretend to determine how much of it is true; but I was then very sorry that the Lieutenant had not communicated to me the intelligence he received, such as it was, before my guest left me, and I was now very desirous to speak with him again, but this was impossible; for though the French ship was foul from a long voyage, and we had just been cleaned, she shot by us as if we had been at anchor, notwithstanding we had a fine fresh gale and all our sails set.
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Voyaging Accounts |  |
© Derived from Volume I of the London 1773 Edition: National Library of Australia call no. FERG 7243, pages 666 - 668, 2004
Published by kind permission of the Library
To cite this page use: https://paulturnbull.org/project/southseas/journals/hv01/666.html