M. de Kerguelen, Commander of the King's ships the Berrier, the Fortune, the Gros-Ventre, the Rolland, the Oiseau & the Dauphine.

Extract from the Journal de la Navigation for the discovery of the Austral lands, and for the verification of a new route proposed to shorten by about eight hundred leagues the crossing from Europe to China.

"I had been planning for a long time to discover the southern lands, or to make a voyage to the southern part of the globe, to try to find some land in the immense space of the seas surrounding the South Pole between Cape Horn, New Holland and the Cape of Good Hope. These seas contain an expanse of more than 1,500 leagues in diameter, and geographers and scientists were convinced that there was a continent there. New Zealand was not even known to be an island. It was thought to be part of the Southern Continent, and it was not until 1770 that the English Captain Cook made it known that there were two islands separated by a navigable channel."