Description
Freycinet anchored at Rawak Island off Papua, New Guinea, on 16 December 1818 and spent some time there and at Waigiou. The expedition had already encountered friendly natives from the nearby island of Gebe, exchanging gifts and dining with them on the Uranie, before the islanders rejoined Freycinet in January 1819 on Rawak to bid his expedition farewell. From Louis Claude de S. de Freycinet’s, “Voyage autour du Monde… Historique”. Note the Historique which contained the topographical views volume was published in 1828. In 1817, he commanded the Uranie, in which Louis Isidore Duperrey, Jacques Arago, Adrien Taunay the Younger and others went to Rio de Janeiro, to take a series of pendulum measurements as well as a larger scheme for obtaining observations, not only in geography and ethnology, but in astronomy, terrestrial magnetism, and meteorology, and for the collection of specimens in natural history. The voyage visited Australia, Mariana Islands, Hawaii, Timor, Guam, New Zealand.
