Page:Early voyages to Terra Australis.djvu/37

 Rh his return from that country, and whom he afterwards married to one of his own relations there, he having embraced Christianity. The author of the account himself being animated by a strong desire of preaching the gospel in the country of his ancestors, spent his whole life in endeavouring to prevail on those who had the care of foreign missions to send him there, and to fulfil the promise the first French navigator had made, that he should visit that country again. Unfortunately Gonneville's journals, on his return, fell into the hands of the English, and were lost. The author, however, collected his materials from the traditions and loose papers of his own family, and the judicial declaration above mentioned. This account was to have been presented to the Pope, but it never was printed till it fell into the hands of the bookseller Cramoisy. The narrative is to the effect that some French merchants, being tempted by the success of the Portuguese under Vasco de Gama, determined upon sending a ship to the Indies by the same route which he had sailed. The ship was equipped at Honfleur. "The Sieur de Gonneville, who commanded her, weighed anchor in the month of June, 1503, and doubled the Cape of Good Hope, where he was assailed by a furious tempest, which made him lose his route, and abandoned him to the wearisome calm of an unknown sea." "Not knowing what course to steer, the sight of some birds coming from the south determined them to sail in that direction in the hope of finding land. They found what they desired, that is to say, a great country,