"The intelligent account which these islanders gave of the vessels which had anchored in this archipelago," says the narrative, "convinced us that La Perouse had not visited any of these islands. They remembered perfectly every occasion upon which they had seen Captain Cook, and they indicated the intervals between his visits by the crops of yams, reckoning two in each year."
It is true that their information, as far as it related to La Perouse, was in direct contradiction to the facts which Dumont-Durville collected thirty-six years later, when Tamaha was queen.
"I was anxious to know," he says, "if any Europeans had visited Tonga between Cook and D'Entrecasteaux. After a few moments' reflection, she explained to me very clearly that a few years before D'Entrecasteaux's visit, two large ves……
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