We learn from King a little about the Pere Receveur—­a very little, truly, but sufficient to make us wish to know more.  From the circumstance that his quarters were on the astrolabe, and that, therefore, he was not brought very much under the notice of Laperouse, we read scarcely anything about him in the commander’s book.  Once during the voyage some acids used by him for scientific purposes ignited, and set fire to the ship, but the danger was quickly suppressed.  This incident, and that of the wounding of Receveur at Manua, are nearly all we are told about him from the commander.  But he struck King as being “a man of letters and genius.”  He was a collector of natural curiosities, having under his care “a great number of philosophical instruments.”  King’s few lines, giving the impression derived from a necessarily brief conversation, seem to bring the Abbe before us in a flash.  “A man of letters and genius”:  how gladly we would know more of one of whom those words could be written!  Receveur died shortly before Laperouse sailed away, and was buried at the foot of a tree, to which were nailed a couple of boards bearing an inscription.  Governor Phillip, when the boards fell down, had the inscription engraved on a copper plate.  The tomb, which is now so prominent an object at Botany Bay, was erected by the Baron de Bougainville in 1825.  The memorials to the celebrated navigator and the simple scholar stand together.

King, in common with Tench, records the admiring way in which Laperouse spoke of Cook.  He “informed me that every place where he has touched or been near, he found all the astronomical and nautical works of Captain Cook to be very exact and true, and concluded by saying, ’Enfin, Monsieur Cook a tant fait qu’il ne m’a rien laisse a faire que d’ admirer ses oeuvres.’” (In short, Mr. Cook has done so much that he has left me nothing to do but to admire his works).

There is very little more to tell about those few weeks spent at Botany Bay before the navigator and his companions “vanished trackless into blue immensity,” as Carlyle puts it.  A fragment of conversation is preserved by Tench.  A musket was fired one day, and the natives marvelled less at the noise than at the fact that the bullet made a hole in a piece of bark at which it was aimed.  To calm them, “an officer whistled the air of ‘Malbrook,’ which they appeared highly charmed with, and greeted him with equal pleasure and readiness.  I may remark here,” adds the Captain of Marines, “what I was afterwards told by Monsieur de Perousse” (so he mis-spells the name) “that the natives of California, as throughout all the isles of the Pacific Ocean, and in short wherever he had been, seemed equally touched and delighted with this little plaintive air.”  It is gratifying to be able to record Captain Tench’s high opinion of the efficacy of the tune, which is popularly known nowadays as “We won’t go home till morning.”  One has often heard of telling things “to the Marines.”  This gallant officer, doubtless, used to whistle them, to a “little plaintive air.”