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THE LINDA HALL LIBRARY HISTORY OF SCIENCE COLLECTION
 

Voyages: Scientific Circumnavigations 1679 to 1859
  Louis-Antoine comte de Bougainville's Voyage 1766-1769

 

Bougainville describes in his journal that as they came ashore at Tahiti, they were greeted by many people from the island who approached the ship in boats. The sailors were invited each to choose a woman to accompany him ashore. It as

"very difficult, amidst such a sight, to keep at their work four hundred young French sailors … In spite of all our precautions, a young girl came on board, and placed herself upon the quarter deck, near one of the hatch-ways, which was open… The girl carelessly dropt a cloth, which covered her, and appeared to the eyes of all beholders… the celestial form of that goddess, [Venus]. Both soldiers and sailors endeavored to come to the hatchway …"

 
The long voyage across the Pacific was rewarded when landfall was made at Tahiti. Bougainville arrived there after Captain Samuel Wallis in the English ship, the Dolphin, had reluctantly departed from the island paradise.

 


Bougainville's Route to Tahiti [Taiti]

from Voyage Autour du Monde
Paris: Chez Saillant & Nyon, 1772.

Bougainville: Page 4 of 6.
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