p. 7, footnote 1: “Bougainville is fond of sprinkling Latin tags in his text, but he does so from memory and at times misquotes or changes the original. He draws his inspiration here and on a number of other occasions from Virgil’s Aeneid and in particular the first book in which a wild storm drives Aeneas and his men off course.” [Editor’s note]
p. 24-25, 1st (January 1768), upon reading Relation d’un voyage fait en 1695…par une escadre de vaisseaux du Roy, command é e par M. de Gennes (1698): The map of the bay and Port Gallant [Galant] reproduced in Mr de Gennes’s book is most accurate. The details given in his book on the part of the strait that he saw are thin and of little value to a sailor. The best journal of the strait is Sir Narborough’s. It is still instructive, in spite of the Abb é Pr é vost’s attempts to edit it down and disfigure it. Frankly, the way in which fine style writers render sailors’ journals is pitiful. They would blush at the stupidities and absurdities they make them say, if they had the slightest knowledge of naval terminology. These authors take great care to cut back every detail that has to do with navigation and that could help guide navigators; they want to make a book that appeals to the silly women of both sexes and end up writing a book that every reader finds boring and no one finds of any use.
p. 27, quotes Psalms 148:8 in Latin.
p. 33: Rereading the passage in Frézier and combining it with the map of the strait that he provides, one can see that Fr é zier places Elizabeth Bay from where Marcant sailed to enter his channel…. [A.F. Fr é zier. A Voyage to the South-Sea and along the Coast of Chile and Peru in the Years 1712, 1713 and 1714. London, 1717.]