On the 25th of May, D'Urville began the exploration of the Viti or Fiji Archipelago. At the outset he was so fortunate as to fall in with a native of Tonga who was living on the Fiji Islands for purposes of trade, and had previously visited Otaheite, New Zealand, and Australia. This man, as well as a Guam islander, proved most useful to the commander in furnishing him with the names of more than 200 islands belonging to this group, and in acquainting him beforehand with their position, and that of the reefs in their neighbourhood. At the same time, Gressier, the hydrographer, collected all the materials requisite for preparing a chart of the Fiji Islands. At this station a sloop was put under orders to proceed to the island of Laguemba, where was an anchor which D'Urville would have been well pleased to obtain, as he had lost two of his own while at Tonga. On arrival at the island, Lottin, who was in command of the sloop, observed on the shore none but women and children; armed men, however, soon came running up, made the women leave the place, and were preparing to seize the sloop and make the sailors prisoners. Their intentions were too plain to leave room for any doubt on the subject, so Lottin at once gave orders to draw up the grapnel, and got away into the open sea before there was time for an encounter to take place. During eighteen consecutive days, in the face of bad weather and a rough sea, the _Astrolabe_ cruised through the Fiji Archipelago, surveyed the islands of Laguemba, Kandabou, Viti-Levou, Oumbenga Vatou Lele, Ounong Lebou, Malolo, and many others, giving special attention to the southern islands of the group, which up to that period had remained almost entirely unknown. The population of this group, if we accept D'Urville's account, form a kind of transition between the copper-coloured, or the Polynesian, and the black or Melanesian races. Their strength and vigour are in proportion to their tall figures, and they make no secret of their cannibal propensities. On the 11th of June the corvette set sail for the harbour of Carteret; surveyed one by one the islands of Erronan and Annatom, the Loyalty Islands, of which group D'Urville discovered the Chabrol and Halgan Islands, the little group of the Beaupie Islands, the Astrolabe reefs, all the more dangerous as they are thirty miles distant from the Beaupie Islands, and sixty from New Caledonia. The island of Huon, and the chain of reefs to the north of New Caledonia, were subsequently surveyed. From this point D'Urville reached the Louisiade Archipelago in six days, but the stormy weather there encountered determined him to abandon the course he had planned out, and not to pass through Torres Straits. He thought that an early examination of the southern coast of New Britain, and of the northern coast of New Guinea, would be the most conducive to the interests of science.