Page:Journal of the Right Hon. Sir Joseph Banks.djvu/489

Rh of our discoveries. Should the French have published an account of Mr. De Bougainville's voyage before that of the second Dolphin, how infallibly will they claim the discovery of Cypre, or Otahite, as their own, and treat the Dolphin's having seen it as a fiction, which we are enabled to set forth with some show of truth, as the Endeavour really did see it, a twelvemonth, however, after Mr. De Bougainville. If England choose to assert her prior claim to it, as she may hereafter do if the French settle, it may be productive of very disagreeable consequences.