Louis the Sixteenth exercised as a sovereign, but also to the unusual circumstance of a resolution passed by the National Assembly with a humane purpose for its object. The painful uncertainty which had been felt in France concerning the fate of M. de la Pérouse and his ships 'La Boussole' and 'L' Astrolabe,' induced the National Assembly to request that the king should order his ministers and consuls, residing in different countries, to set on foot all possible inquiries with a view of ascertaining whether that commander, or any of his men, might yet be living, as shipwrecked mariners, on some distant island of the South Seas. It was also suggested that the king should offer suitable rewards to all navigators, of any nation whatsoever, who should procure tidings of the fate of M. de la Pérouse, and that two French ships should be fitted out with the double purpose of searching for the missing crews, and of extending scientific and geographical knowledge. Accordingly the frigates 'La Recherche' and 'L'Esperance' were equipped at Brest, and the Admiral D'Entrecasteaux received the command of the expedition which, in the words of the poor king,[1] "présentait une occasion de perfectionner la description du globe, at d'accroítre les connaissances humaines."
The admiral failed in bringing to light the fate of M. de la Pérouse, but his geographical surveyor, M. Beautems Beaupré, made such an accurate chart of Western Australia from Cape Leeuwin as far as 132° east of Greenwich, that Flinders, in speaking of it, says that the advantages to geography from his own subsequent survey of
- ↑ 'Voyage de D'Entrecasteaux envoyé à la Recherche de la Pérouse.' Rédigé par M. de Rossel. Paris, 808.
