on the coasts, islands, and seas of Japan and California, must be on the
point of returning to Europe. As such enterprises are for the general
advantage of all nations, it is the king's will that Captain Cook be
treated as the commander of a neutral and allied power, and that all
navigators who meet this celebrated sailor do inform him of his Majesty's
orders regarding him."

Captain Cook was dead, massacred by the savages, but the ardor which had
animated him was not extinct; on the 10th of August, 1785, a French
sailor, M. de La Peyrouse, left Brest with two frigates for the purpose
of completing the discoveries of the English explorer. The king had been
pleased to himself draw up his instructions, bearing the impress of an
affectionate and over-strained humanity. "His Majesty would regard it as
one of the happiest successes of the expedition," said the instructions,
"if it were terminated without having cost the life of a single man." La
Peyrouse and his shipmates never came back. Louis XVI. was often
saddened by it. "I see what it is quite well," the poor king would
repeat, "I am not lucky."

M. de La Peyrouse had scarcely commenced the preparations for his fatal
voyage, when, on the 5th of June, 1783, the States of the Vivarais,
assembled in the little town of Annonay, were invited by MM. de
Montgolfier, proprietors of a large paper-manufactory, to be witnesses
of an experiment in physics. The crowd thronged the thoroughfare. An
enormous bag, formed of a light canvas lined with paper, began to swell
slowly before the curious eyes of the public; all at once the cords which
held it were cut, and the first balloon rose majestically into the air.
Successive improvements made in the Montgolfiers' original invention
permitted bold physicists ere long to risk themselves in a vessel
attached to the air-machine. There sailed across the Channel a balloon
bearing a Frenchman, M. Blanchard, and an Englishman, Dr. Jefferies; the
latter lost his flag. Blanchard had set the French flag floating over
the shores of England; public enthusiasm welcomed him on his return. The
queen was playing cards at Versailles. "What I win this game shall go to
Blanchard," she said. The same feat, attempted a few days later by a
professor of physics, M. Pilatre de Rozier, was destined to cost him his
life.

So many scientific explorations, so many new discoveries of nature's
secrets were seconded and celebrated by an analogous move