From Louis Antoine de Bougainville and James Cook in the eighteenth century to mid-nineteenth century explorers like Dumont d'Urville, Tahiti enchanted European navigators who visited it during the great voyages of exploration of the Pacific. This small island was seen as the epitome of the South Seas paradise and became famed for its attractive inhabitants and seemingly carefree lifestyle. It has largely retained this place in European imagination to this day. The French were particularly systematic in their exploration and the French government funded a number of official voyages to the Pacific between 1768 and 1846, eight of which called at Tahiti and her islands - now the territory of French Polynesia. As well as charting the great southern ocean, hitherto unknown on account of its distance from Europe, these expeditions amassed considerable knowledge of the new phenomena discovered in this region. Because these scientific expeditions took place prior to the invention of photography, artwork was the only form of visual documentation. Scientists therefore were trained and instructed to draw everything they encountered - people and their customs, artefacts, housing, clothing, landscapes, and numerous specimens of plants, birds, fish and other animals. The result was hundreds of drawings - pencilled sketches, watercolours, portraits and maps and charts - a large number of which were later chosen for publication as engravings and lithographs. Many were never published but added greatly to scientific knowledge at the time. These records are a valuable testimony of a period extending over 80 years - the earliest being before the arrival of missionaries and colonists - and together they constitute a documentary heritage for the people of French Polynesia. This bilingual book contains a selection of sixty of the most attractive and historically important images, both published and unpublished, each of them accompanied by a detailed caption. An illustrated introductory text provides a useful and interesting overview of this important period in the history of the Pacific, from both a European and Polynesian perspective.