We had already been to the end of the bay which is perhaps the most extraordinary place on earth. Imagine a vast basin, whose depth in the centre is impossible to estimate, edged by great, steep, snow-covered mountains; not a single blade of grass can be seen on this immense rocky mass which Nature has condemned to perpetual sterility. I have never seen a single breath of wind disturb the surface of this water which is affected only by the enormous blocks of ice that fall quite frequently from five different glaciers, making as they drop a sound that echoes far into the mountains. The air is so clear and the silence so deep that the voice of one man can be heard half a league away, as can the sound of birds which have laid their eggs in the hollows formed by the rocks.

Our boats left as ordered at 6 a.m. It was as much a pleasure trip as a working expedition: they were to hunt and to lunch under trees. With Mr Descures I sent Mr de Pierrevert and Mr de Montarnal, the only relative I had in the navy, whom I loved like a son; never had a young officer given me such expectations, and as for the Chevalier de Pierrevert he had already acquired what I expected very soon from the former.

Our seven best soldiers made up the crew of this Biscay boat on which my master pilot had also gone to take the soundings; Mr Boutin was seconded in his small boat by Mr Mouton, Frigate Lieutenant. I knew that the Astrolabe's boat was commanded by Mr de Marchainvillc, but I did not know whether there were other officers as well.

At 10 a.m. I saw my little boat coming back. Somewhat surprised as I was not expecting it so soon, I asked Mr Boutin before he had a chance to come on board whether there was something new; I feared at first an attack by the natives; Mr Boutin's appearance was not reassuring: the greatest sadness showed on his face. He soon told me of the awful disaster he had just witnessed and from which he had escaped only because his firm character had enabled him to see what resources he still had in such a great peril. Carried (by following his commanding officer) towards the breakers leading to the pass while the tide was flowing out at 3 or 4 leagues an hour, he decided to present the stern of his boat to the waves so that, pushed by them and abandoning himself to them, they would not swamp his boat, but nevertheless he was likely to be carried out to sea by the tide. Soon he saw the breakers in front of him and found himself in the open sea: more concerned about the safety of his comrades than his own, he rowed along the edge of the breakers in the hope of saving some; he even went back among them, but the tide continued to drive him out. In the end he climbed on Mr Mouton's shoulders in order to scan a wider scene: it was all in vain, everything had sunk out of sight!

We found ground everywhere in the bay 4 leagues from land in 60 fathoms... but the sea is fairly rough and one can only stay a few hours in such an anchorage, waiting for daylight or a break in the fog. The tide is full at the new and full moons, at one thirty; it rises 7 feet and since this bay is very open the current hardly makes itself felt and I have never found it reaching a speed of half a knot. One cannot put into words the number of whales that surrounded us nor their familiarity; they blew constantly, within half a pistol shot of our frigates, and filled the air with a great stench. We were unaware of this effect, but the local inhabitants told us that the water they send up has a very bad smell which is felt at a fair distance, and this phenomenon would presumably not have been a surprise for the fishermen of Greenland or Nantucket.

Fog almost perpetually covers this coast, which makes it fairly difficult to approach; otherwise, there would be few others where this would be easier - not a single underwater rock can be found below the waterline a cable length from shore where one can drop anchor if the fog is too dense and wait for a break in the weather in order to sight the Spanish settlement situated in the angle formed by the East and South coast.

The sea was covered with pelicans 4 or 5 leagues from shore; it appears that this bird never goes out further and navigators who come upon them in fog can be sure that they are at most that distance from land. We saw these birds for the first time in Monterey Bay, and I have since learnt that they are very common on the whole Californian coast; the Spanish call them alkatros.

A lieutenant-colonel who resides in Monterey is Governor of both Californias; his realm has a circumference of more than 800 leagues, but his real subjects are 282 cavalrymen who have to serve as garrison to five small forts, and supply squads of 4 or 5 men to each of the 25 missions or parishes established in the Old and New California. Such small resources are enough to control and impress some 50,000 Indians roaming in this vast area of America, of whom about 10,000 have embraced Christianity.

These Indians are generally small and weak and show no sign of this love of freedom and independence which characterises the people of the North, whose arts and skills they lack; their colour approaches closely that of blacks whose hair is not frizzy - these people's hair grows long and quite strong; they trim it to a length of 4 or 5 inches; several have a beard, others, according to the missionary fathers, have never had one, and it is a question which has not even been resolved in the district. The Governor, who has travelled extensively into the interior and who has lived among these natives for 15 years, assured us that those who are beardless have pulled it out with the shell of a bivalve they use like tweezers: the head of the missions, who has been equally as long in California, maintained the opposite in our presence; it was difficult for travellers to decide between them. Our duty being to report only what we saw, we must say that we saw only half the adults with a beard; in some cases it is quite bushy, and would have been regarded as impressive in Turkey or around Moscow.

These Indians are very skilful with the bow; they killed some tiny birds in our presence; it must be said that their patience as they creep towards them is hard to describe; they hide and, so to speak, snake up to the game, releasing the arrow from a mere 15 paces.

Their skill with large game is even more impressive; we all of us saw an Indian with a deer's head tied over his own, crawling on all fours, pretending to eat grass, and carrying out this pantomime in such a way that our hunters would have shot him from 30 paces if they had not been forewarned. In this way they go up to deer herds within very close range and kill them with their arrows.

Loreto is the only Presidio of the Old California on the East coast of this peninsula; it has a garrison of 54 cavalrymen who supply small detachments to the following 15 missions, which are in the care of the Dominican Fathers who succeeded the Jesuits and the Franciscans; the latter have remained in sole charge of the ten missions of New California, The 15 missions dependent on Loreto are: St Vincent, St Dominic, Rosary, St Ferdinand, St Francis de Borgia, St Gertrude, St Ignatius, Guadelupe, St Rosalie, Concepcion, St Joseph, St Francis Xavier, Loreto, St Joseph of Cape St Lucar, and All Saints.

Approximately four thousand converted Indians, gathered around the 15 above-named parishes, are the only fruit of this long apostolate by the various religious orders that have followed each other in this hard ministry; one can read in Father Venegas' history of California the date when Fort Loreto and the various missions it protects were founded. By comparing their previous state with this year's, it will noticed that the temporal and spiritual progress of these missions is quite slow; there is only a single group of Spanish inhabitants; it is true that the country is unhealthy, and that the province of Sonora, situated on the eastern side of the Gulf of California, just as California is on the western side, appeals much more to Spanish inhabitants who find a fertile soil and rich mines in this country, much more attractive in their eyes than the pearl fisheries of the peninsula which require a certain number of slave divers who are often very difficult to obtain. But northern California seems to me to have many more advantages, in spite of its greater distance from Mexico; its first establishment, which is St Diego, dates only from 1769, on the 26th of the month of July.

Prior to Spanish colonisation, the Indians of northern California grew only a little maize and lived almost exclusively on the product of their fishing and hunting; no country has more fish and game of every kind; rabbits, hares and deer were as common as in the royal hunting grounds; otters and seals are as plentiful as in the North, and in winter they kill a very large quantity of bears, foxes, wolves and wild cats. The undergrowth and the plains are full of small grey crested quails that live in groups like those of Europe, but in coveys of three or four hundred. They are plump and taste excellent, the trees provide abodes for the most charming of birds; our ornithologists stuffed several varieties of sparrows, blue jays, tits, spotted woodpeckers, orioles; among birds of prey we saw the white-headed eagle, the great and the small falcon, the goshawk, the sparrow-hawk, the black vulture, the eagle owl and the raven; on the ponds by the sea we found ducks, the grey pelican and the white yellow-crested one, various types of gulls, cormorants, curlews, ringed plovers, small seagulls and herons; and finally we killed and stuffed a promerops which most ornithologists thought belonged to the old continent.

The fertility of this land is also beyond words. Vegetables of every description succeed perfectly; we enriched the gardens of the Governor and the missions with different seeds brought from Paris, which had kept perfectly and will provide them with added benefits.

Crops of maize, barley, peas and wheat can only be compared with those of Chile; our Europeans farmers have no idea of this degree of fertility; the average production of wheat is 70 or 80 to one, extreme cases being sixty and 100. There are very few fruit trees, but the climate is highly suitable for them; it does not differ greatly from that of our southern French provinces, at least it is never any colder but the summer heat is more moderate on account of the constant fogs that make navigation so difficult but give this soil a humidity which is very helpful to its vegetation.

This architecture, widespread in the two Californias, has never been changed, in spite of the missionaries' endeavours, the Indians say that they like the open air, that it is convenient to be able to set fire to one's house when it becomes infested by too many fleas and to build a new one in a couple of hours; the independent Indians who move around so much, like all hunting people, have another reason as well; this space of 6 feet by 4 in height in enough to house two families.

These customs may appear patriarchal to some of our readers who overlook the fact that there are no belongings in any household that could tempt the cupidity of the neighbouring hut; since their food supplies are assured, their only remaining need is the procreation of other beings as dull as themselves. The men, in order to adopt Christianity, have made greater sacrifices than the women because polygamy was allowed, and it was even their practice to marry all the sisters of a single family; the mission women, on the other hand, enjoy the advantage of receiving the caresses of only one man. I must however admit that I did not understand the unanimous report of the missionaries on this so-called polygamy; how can a savage people accept it, because, as the number of men and women is roughly equal, it imposes a forced continence on several of them? unless faithfulness between spouses is not compulsory as it is in the missions, where the religious take care to lock up one hour after supper the women whose husbands are away as well as all girls over the age of 9; these same women and girls are supervised during the day by matrons; all these precautions are still insufficient, and we have seen men in the stocks and women in irons for having outwitted the vigilance of the female Arguses for whom two eyes is not enough.

The converted Indians have retained all their ancient customs that their new religion does not prohibit; same huts, same games, same clothes - the richest of these is an otter skin cloak covering the back down to the groin; the laziest have only a length of cloth supplied by the mission to hide their nakedness and a small rabbit skin coat covering their shoulders down to the waist: it is tied under the chin with a string, the rest of the body is completely naked, as is the head; some however have very skilfully plaited hats.

The women wear a coat of ill-tanned deer skin; the mission women customarily make this into a little corset with sleeves; with a small reed apron and a skirt of deer skin over their loins coming halfway down their legs, this is their only dress. Girls under 9 wear only a simple belt, and the children of the other sex all go naked.

The men and the women's hair is trimmed to a length of 4 or 5 inches. The Indians of the rancherias who lack iron instruments carry out this operation with burning brands. Their custom is also to paint their bodies in red or, when they are mourning, in black. The missionaries have banned the former, but have had to allow the other because these people are very attached to their friends; they shed tears when they are reminded of them, even though they lost them a long time ago, and feel offended if one should inadvertently pronounce their names in their presence. Family ties are not as strong as those of friendship; children hardly acknowledge their fathers; they leave his hut when they can see to their own subsistence; but they remain attached longer to their mother who brought them up with an extreme kindness and never beat them, except when they displayed cowardice in their little fights against children of their age.

I have already made known my opinion that the way of life of the people who have been converted to Christianity would be more favourable to a growth in population if the right of property and a certain freedom formed the basis of it; however, since the ten mission stations were set up in Northern California, the Fathers have baptised 7701 Indians of both sexes and have buried only 2388. But it must be stressed that this calculation does not indicate, as in European cities, whether the population is growing or not, because they baptise Independent Indians every day; the only consequence is that Christianity is spreading, and I have already said that the matters of the next life could not be in better hands.

The natives then informed him that those things which he had seen, with the sword guard, had been brought in their canoes from a distant island, which they called Malicolo (Vanikoro), and that two ships, such as the Hunter was, had been wrecked there, when the old men now in Tikopia were boys, and that there yet remained at Vanikoro large quantities of the wrecks. The lascar confirmed this report and said he had been there about six years back, and that he had seen and conversed with two old men who belonged to the ships.... I immediately came to the conclusion that the two ships wrecked must be those under the command of the far-famed and lamented Count de la Perouse, as no other two European ships were lost or missing at so remote a period.

He had been at Vanikoro for about five years.... From the natives he learned that the two ships alluded to in this narrative ran on shore in the night on reefs some considerable distance from the land... some of the crew as escaped to land were murdered by the islanders. Their skulls were offered to the city in a temple where they remained many years, and were seen by many Tikopians. The narrator did not see the skulls himself but believed they were now mouldered away. The ship which had been wrecked at Paiow, after being on the reef, was driven into a good situation. The crew of these ships consisted of several hundred men. The ship stranded at Paiow was broken up to build a two-masted ship. The people, while employed building the two-masted ship, had a fence built round her of wooden palisading, within which they lived. There were several of the islanders friendly disposed towards them: others were very hostile, and kept up a continual war with the shipwrecked people. When the new vessel was built, all but two men embarked in her, and sailed away for their native country, after which they never returned.