len's first voyage had taken place.

The captain, on his return homeward, in March 1775, heard, a second
time, something about this French discovery at the Cape, where he met
with Monsieur Crozet, who very obligingly communicated to him a chart of
the southern hemisphere, wherein were delineated not only his own
discoveries, but also that of Captain Kerguelen. But what little
information that chart could convey, was still necessarily confined to
the operations of the first voyage; the chart here referred to, having
been published in France in 1773, that is, before any intelligence could
possibly be conveyed from the southern hemisphere of the result of
Kerguelen's second visit to this new land, which, we now know, happened
towards the close of the same year.

Of these latter operations, the only account (if that can be called an
account, which conveys no particular information) received by Captain
Cook from Monsieur Crozet, was, that a later voyage had been undertaken
by the French, under the command of Captain Kerguelen, which had ended
much to the disgrace of that commander.

What Crozet had not communicated to our author, and what we are sure,
from a variety of circumstances, he had never heard of from any other
quarter, he missed an opportunity of learning at Teneriffe. He expressed
his being sorry, as we have just read, that he did not know sooner that
there was on board the frigate an officer who had been with Kerguelen,
as he might have obtained from him more interesting information about
this land, than its situation. And, indeed, if he had conversed with
that officer, he might have obtained information more interesting than
he was aware of; he might have learnt that Kerguelen had actually
visited this southern land a second time, and that the little isle of
which he then received the name and position from the Chevalier de
Borda, was a discovery of this later voyage. But the account conveyed to
him, being, as the reader will observe, unaccompanied with any date, or
other distinguishing circumstance, he left Teneriffe, and arrived on the
coasts of Kerguelen's Land, under a full persuasion that it had been
visited only once before. And, even with regard to the operations of
that first voyage, he had nothing to guide him, but the very scanty
materials afforded to him by Baron Plettenberg and Monsieur Crozet.

The truth is, the French seem, for some reason or other, not surely
founded on the importance of Kergue