[...] It is not an account of nations which resemble ourselves in manners and civilization, or of countries which had been a hundred times before visited and described; on the contrary, in this voyage the reader is conducted amid the savage tribes of the South Seas, through tracts never before fully explored, and made acquainted with human nature under a new aspect, described from the personal observation of a living witness, who has had ample opportunities of studying their characters both in peace and war, and who had nearly fallen a victim to their cannibal propensities.
This voyage also possesses a peculiar interest, from its having solved a question which divided the opinion of the scientific world for a period of forty years. And the discoverer of the fate of La Perouse, after having effected this discovery, considered that to lay a narrative of the voyage before the public, was a duty he owed to the French as well as to the British nation, and more especially to the Government of British India, under whose auspices it was performed. [...]