A Collection of the most celebrated voyages & travels, from the discovery of America to the present time : arranged in systematic order, geographical and chronological, the whole exhibiting a faithful and lively delineation of the world / carefully selected from writers of different nations by R.P. Forster (Newcastle upon Tyne [England] : Printed by Mackenzie and Dent ..., 1818) 4 v.

This set is open at the illustration in vol. 4 of “Jean Baptiste Cabri, native of France.” (facing p. 448) This occurs in the account of Captain Wilson’s missionary voyage to the Southern Pacific Ocean performed in the years 1796, 1797, and 1798.

Captain James Wilson of the Duff set sail from England in August 1796 to take a party of missionaries to Tahiti. These were the first English missionaries to land there. As an aside to the account we learn of Cabri. He was a French sailor discovered by Georg H. von Langsdorff, the naturalist on Krusenstern’s Russian expedition, living in the Marquesas in 1804. There were two Europeans on the island,

an Englishman named Roberts and a Frenchman, a native of Bourdeaux, named Jean Baptiste Cabri. These two Europeans lived in a state of great enmity. Cabri was tatooed, and had married the daughter of one of the inferior chiefs. He appears to have been an unprincipled fellow, and did not possess such influence over the natives as the Englishman. He was however brought away by the Russians, and being an excellent swimmer, was afterwards engaged as teacher of that useful art to the corps of marine cadets at Cronstadt. (p. 448)

Afterwards, Cabri displayed himself at fairs, becoming the first European to exhibit as a tattooed man.

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