Voyage to the South Pole and Oceania, Volume VI: Banda, Port Essington, New Guinea and Makassar

February 1839. Back from the Antarctic ice, Jules Dumont d'Urville's Astrolabe and Zélée leave Ambon for the warm seas that lie between the Moluccas and Australia.

At Banda, the nutmeg island, three officers climb the volcano Gounong-Api while the commander observes planters, Chinese merchants and convicts. Against stubborn winds, the corvettes follow the coast of New Guinea, find the ruins of an abandoned English post at Raffles Bay along with Malay trepang fishermen, and are then received at Victoria Town, the young English colony at Port Essington.

Next come the mangrove channels of the Aru Islands, where the boats' crews pass uncomfortable nights, and Triton Bay in New Guinea: forests under the rain, birds of paradise, and the friendship of the Papuan Anguin. At Ceram, the Orang-Kaya Safi-Rouddin bargains hard, and the officers set out by night to hunt wild boar. At Makassar, Governor Bousquet opens up the Dutch town, a Chinese wedding and the court of the regent of Goa.

Interwoven with the accounts of his officers, this journal captures in a few months a whole world of colonial empires, trading posts and island peoples. There remain the shoals of the crossing to be avoided: the Batavia roads await at the end of the route.