History of a Voyage to the Falkland Islands

defense of these Falkland Islandsoriginal: "Isles Malouines"; named after the mariners from Saint-Malo, later known in English as the Falklands which were found inhabited only by long-legged spiders and sea-snailsoriginal: "grelots"; likely referring to a type of univalve shell or bell-shaped marine life found on the coast, and which even the Court of France has just ceded to the Spanish Crown; it is of a more general utility, whether for Sovereigns or for all thinking men, by the ease it provides to penetrate into the Southern Landsoriginal: "Terres Australes"; the hypothesized Great Southern Continent, Terra Australis Incognita, and to verify what so many travelers have written regarding the existence of those Giants of the Pole who are called the Patagoniansoriginal: "Patagons"; a legendary race of giant humans rumored to inhabit the tip of South America.

To leave nothing to be desired on this curious matter—important and still new, despite so many travelers who have dwelled upon it—I shall supplement the silence of Dom PernetyAntoine-Joseph Pernety (1716–1796), a Benedictine monk and naturalist who accompanied Bougainville on his 1763 expedition regarding three objects:

the ancient notions regarding the Falkland Islands; the accurate ideas one can form of the Patagonians; and the research to be conducted in the Southern World.

Having only travelers as guides in this career, one can only proceed with the greatest circumspection; it is necessary to weigh their testimonies, to compare them with one another; and even when they are unanimous, to make them yield to that of reason: for in the examination of an obviously absurd fact, the authority of a single Philosopher ought to prevail over the suffrage of all mankind.

There are prejudices which seem inseparable from travels; such is the opinion that one will encounter nothing but the marvelous;