Rear-Admiral Dumont d'Urville, the French James Cook, was a brilliant sailor who made two great scientific and exploratory voyages to the Pacific and the Antarctic. The first, 1826-29, solved the 40-year-old mystery of the disappearance of La Pérouse. The coup of the second voyage, 1837-40, was d'Urville's discovery, ahead of the American Wilkes and the British Ross expeditions, that Antarctica was a continent. He charted and conducted a risky landing on the coast he named Terre Adélie after his wife. He was twice in New Zealand. In 1840, to his chagrin, when he was in the South Island, Britain proclaimed sovereignty over both islands to thwart French plans to settle the Banks Peninsula. D'Urville possessed enormous vitality, curiosity, perseverance and scepticism. His own and his officers' shrewd observations on the many places visited present a sad and often angry commentary on the devastation being wreaked on the ancient but fragile cultures and environments of Oceania. They witnessed frequently unscrupulous and criminal representatives of predatory Europe forcing their commercial values, diseases and religions upon a hapless population.