Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
ernmost point and Bougainville had to take advantage of them. From
late January to the beginning of April his ships scudded north-west-
wards across the ocean, while he scoured the horizon for a landfall.
The
Étoile
and the
Boudeuse
sailed a parallel course keeping just in
sight of each other so as to observe as wide a swathe of ocean as pos-
sible.
Within six weeks scurvy had begun to appear, despite all Bou-
gainville's precautions: 'Each sailor got daily a pint of lemonade, pre-
was mixed with fresh water obtained either from rain or from dis-
tilling sea water in an apparatus designed by a Monsieur Poissonier.
Every night the still was set in operation and it produced one barrel
by morning. Although Bougainville set much store by these meas-
ures it is unlikely that they did anything to stave off scurvy.
Powdered lemonade cannot have provided the vitamin C so abund-
ant in fresh fruit and vegetables. Fortunately, the French expedition
reached land before the disease became rampant.
After passing the outer islands of the Tuamotu archipelago, the
voyagers came on 6 April to Tahiti which Wallis had discovered the
previous year. The islanders must have thought that their British
friends had returned for they rushed out by canoe in their hundreds
to greet them, bearing gifts of fowls, fruit, meat and coconuts. Nor
was that all.
The periaguas [canoes] were full of females, who, for agreeable
features, are not inferior to most European women, and who, in point
of beauty of the body might, with much reason, vie with them all. Most
of these fair females were naked, for the men and the old women that
accompanied them, had stripped them of the garments which they
generally dress themselves in ... The men ... soon explained their mean-
ing very clearly. They pressed us to choose a woman and to come on
shore with her; and their gestures, which were nothing less than equi-
