Description

The publications of the Hakluyt Society (founded in 1846) made available edited (and sometimes translated) early accounts of exploration. The first series, which ran from 1847 to 1899, consists of 100 books containing published or previously unpublished works by authors from Christopher Columbus to Sir Francis Drake, and covering voyages to the New World, to China and Japan, to Russia and to Africa and India. François Leguat (1637-1735) was a French Huguenot who became the leader of a group of seven Huguenot refugees forced to colonise the island of Rodriguez in 1693, after the French claimed their intended destination, the Ile de Réunion. He remained on the island for two years, before escaping via the neighbouring island of Mauritius; after imprisonment in Jakarta, he returned to Europe in 1698. Volume 1 describes his journey to Rodriguez and provides descriptions of the island's now extinct flightless birds and giant turtles.

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