François Leguat (1637 - 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 Reunion, 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. Leguat eventually returned to Europe and 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.
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Last updated: 05-17-2005 01:30:02
