François Leguat

François Leguat (1637 to 1639 - September 1?, 1735) was a French explorer and naturalist.

Leguat was a huguenot who fled to Holland after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685. In 1690 he boarded a ship with a group of other Huguenots bound for the Indian Ocean. They intended to start a new life on the island of Réunion, which they believed had been abandoned by the French, but on finding them still there landed instead on the uninhabited island of Rodrigues.

After two years there they constructed a boat and sailed to Mauritius, where they were promptly imprisoned under abhorrent conditions by the French governor. Several of Leguat's companion - who had all survived the stay on the small island and the arduous voyage to Mauritius in good health - died in prison. Leguat eventually was released and moved to Jakarta in 1696, from where he returned to Europe two years later. He published a description of his adventures in "A New Voyage to the East Indies" (1708). This included details of his natural history observations on Rodrigues, such as Rodrigues Solitaire and Newton's Parakeet.

References

*Dodo: From Extinction to Icon - Errol Fuller ISBN 0007145721