A Voyage to California, the Sandwich Islands, & Around the World in the Years 1826-1829 by Auguste Duhaut-Cilly (review)

BOOK REVIEWS147 community was complicated by preconciliar views, Pope Paul's discourse, and the peculiarities of Catholic Action leadership. The author admits that Pope Paul was not successful in formulating a theology of laity during the era of conflict and change unleashed by Vatican Council II. The pope had insufficient time to clarify the theoretical, and so uncertainty over how exactly hierarchy related to laity and vice versa led to dispute in the Italian Church and many resignations from Catholic Action. Add to this the conditions in Italy outside the Church during the late 1960's and 1970's. Social tensions and secularization produced external change in the country, as seen in the successful referenda on divorce and abortion. The new role of the laity, revised liturgy, and an ecumenical outlook are viewed as the fruits of Vatican Council II. Busolini's book reveals that the conceptualization of the role of the laity, in its Italian case study, was halting, and the ongoing process stretches into the new millennium. James J. Divita Marian College, Indianapolis American A Voyage to California, the Sandwich Islands, & Around the World in the Years 1826-1829- By Auguste Duhaut-Cilly. Translated and edited by August Frugé and Neal Harlow. (Berkeley: University of California Press. 1999. Pp. xxxii, 254. $29.95.) The eyewitness accounts of visitors and travelers are a significant source of historical understanding and perspective. This volume is a wonderful example of this genre of historical observation, both in its subject matter and in the perceptive commentary of its author. While this work has been known in the original French, as well as in other translations, including one quite literal and abbreviated English version published in the California Historical Society Quarterly in 1929, this new English translation presents Duhaut-Cilly's narrative with freshness and cogency. August Duhaut-Cilly was born at the dawn of the French Revolution in 1790 and began service in the French navy shortly before his seventeenth birthday. For seven years, from 1807 until 1814, he sailed on French ships and fought in sea battles off the coast of Europe and in the Atlantic and Indian Oceans, ultimately being made a knight of the Legion of Honor. With the advent of peace, he left naval service and spent the next five years applying his maritime experience to various voyages for the merchant marine, including the journey around the world which he chronicled in this volume. He spent the final twenty years of his life in France as a private citizen until his death in 1849. This work contains the author's preface and introduction followed by twenty-three chapters which narrate the journey from France around Cape 148BOOK REVIEWS Horn to the west coast of South America, Mexico, and Baja California, along the length of Alta California as far as the Russian settlement at Fort Ross, across the Pacific to the Hawaiian Islands, to the south coast of China, and finally home to France. Much of the narrative treats Duhaut-Cilly's experiences and observations in Mexican California at a complex and crucial moment in the region's history . Accompanying the text are eleven black-and-white illustrations, four by Duhaut-Cilly, which add to the authentic tone of the eyewitness account. This rich primary source material is preceded by an editors' introduction which provides textual history and criticism, a review of the cast of characters and the context of the voyage, and reflections on Duhaut-Cilly's unique perspective on the experience of Mexican California, both secular and ecclesiastical, on the eve of the secularization of the Franciscan missions. This introduction is thoughtful and balanced so as to whet the reader's appetite for the adventure to come. The volume concludes with a selected bibliography and a very helpful index. The editors, August Frugé and Neal Harlow, bring a combined expertise of publishing and history to the conception and mounting of their work,as well as an engaging translation which accomplishes their goal of restoring "life to an excellent book." Any notes that Duhaut-Cilly included in his original text they mark with an asterisk at the bottom of the page, while presenting their own notes with the traditional...