History of a Voyage to the Falkland Islands

gave his name to the most terrible strait that exists in the seas of the three continents A reference to Ferdinand Magellan and the Strait of Magellan; Sharp, who traversed almost the entire South Sea, and Sir Drake original: "le Chevalier Drack"; referring to Sir Francis Drake who in 1580 The text says 1680, likely a typographical error in the original for 1580, the year Drake completed his circumnavigation placed the polar circle at its zenith, saw the Malouines Islands The Falkland Islands, named "Malouines" by the French after the sailors of St. Malo, but they did not land there; and as these navigators, buried in mists, carried away by currents, and the playthings of the most violent storms, held only an uncertain route, their voyage has been of no resource to those who followed them; it matters little whether they recognized islands, or whether they saw only clouds.

It appears by the Voyage to the South Sea by Frezier Amédée-François Frézier (1682–1773), a French engineer and explorer, a work translated into almost all the

languages of Europe—which constitutes but the smallest part of its merit—that the Malouines Islands were only truly discovered at the beginning of this century by vessels from St. Malo (a); and if it is true, as has been

(a) Here is Frezier's text: "If I have suppressed imaginary lands in my Map, I have added effective ones at 51 degrees of latitude, to which I have given the name of New Islands, for having been discovered since the year 1700, mostly by the vessels of St. Malo. I have placed them based on the Memoirs of the Maurepas and the Saint-Louis, vessels of the East India Company original: "Compagnie des Indes", which saw them up close; and even this latter vessel took on water there in a pond, which I have marked near Port St. Louis. The water was a little reddish and flat, but otherwise good for the Sea. Both traversed different places; but the one who coasted them most closely was the Saint-Jean-Baptiste, commanded by Doublet of Le Havre, who sought to pass through an indentation he saw toward the middle. But having re-