Page:The Boy Travellers in Australasia.djvu/168

144 "And it took thirty-eight years to get the desired information?"

"Yes. All inquiries of navigators and others came to nothing, and gradually the fate of La Pérouse was considered a problem impossible of solution. On the 13th of May, 1826, an English trading-ship from Calcutta, the St. Patrick, Captain Peter Dillon, touched at the island of Tucopia, in latitude 12° 21' south, longitude 168° 33' east. Find its position on the map, and then I'll tell what Captain Dillon discovered there."



Frank and Fred eagerly scanned the map, and by following the lines of latitude and longitude they speedily located Tucopia. It is between the Solomon and New Hebrides groups, and lies nearly due north-west from the Feejees, and a little north of west from Samoa.

"Captain Dillon," continued the Doctor, "found there a Frenchman named Martin Buchert, whom he had known at the Feejees thirteen years before, and also a Lascar sailor who had landed at Tucopia with Buchert. The meeting of Dillon and Buchert was an interesting one; and so much was Dillon absorbed with it, that he did not at first