GARNIER, MARIE JOSEPH FRANCOIS [FRANCIS] French officer and explorer, was born at St. 1?tienne on July 25, 1839. He entered the navy, and after voyaging in Brazilian waters and the Pacific he obtained a post on the staff of Admiral Charner, who from 186o to 1862 was campaigning in Cochin-China. After some time spent in France he returned to the East, and in 1862 he was appointed inspector of the natives in Cochin-China, and entrusted with the administration of Cho-lon, a suburb of Saigon. At his suggestion the marquis de Chasseloup Laubat sent a mission to explore the valley of the Mekong. Garnier accompanied Captain Doudart de Lagree on this ex pedition. From Kratie in Cambodia to Shanghai 5,392 m. were traversed, and of these 3,625 m., chiefly of country unknown to European geography. The area was surveyed with care, and the positions fixed by astronomical methods, most of the observa tions being taken by Garnier himself. Volunteering to lead a detachment to Talifu, the capital of Sultan Suleiman, the sov ereign of the Mohammedan rebels in Yunnan, he successfully carried out the dangerous enterprise. When shortly afterwards Lagree died, Garnier conducted the expedition in safety to the Yang-tsze-Kiang, and thus to the Chinese coast. The preparation of his narrative, after his return to France, was interrupted by the Franco-German War, and during the siege of Paris he served as principal staff officer to the admiral in command of the eighth "sector." Returning to Cochin-China he found the political cir cumstances of the country unfavourable to further exploration, turned to China, and in 1873 followed the upper course of the Yang-tsze-Kiang to the waterfalls. He was next commissioned by Admiral Dupre, governor of Cochin-China, to found a French protectorate or a new colony in Tongking. On Nov. 20, 1873 he took Hanoi, the capital of Tongking, and on the 21st of December he was slain in fight with the Black Flags. His chief fame rests on the fact that he originated the idea of exploring the Mekong, and carried out the larger portion of the work.
The narrative of the principal expedition appeared in 1873, as Voyage d'exploration en lndo-Chine effectue pendant les annees 1866, 1867 et 1868, publie sous la direction de M. Francis Garnier, avec le contours de M. Delaporte et de M. M. Joubert et Thorel (2 vols.) . An account of the Yang-tsze-Kiang from Garnier's pen is given ifi the Bulletin de la Soc. de Geog. (1877) . His Chronique royale du Cambodje, was reprinted from the Journal Asiatique in 1872. See Ocean Highways (1874) for a memoir by Colonel Yule; Petit, Francis Garnier (1885) and Hugh Clifford, Further India, in the Story of Exploration series (1904)