MEMOIR OP LE VAILLANT. 
21 
idea that with their assistance he might he able to 
accomplish the hold enterprise which he had so long 
meditated. But this illusion he soon found himself 
obliged to renounce; and after having prosecuted 
his ornithological researches among them as far west 
as the 14th degree, and north to the tropic of Can- 
cer, he resumed his journey towards the Cape, 
which he reached, not without escaping innumerable 
perils, within sixteen months after his departure. 
His health having suffered from fatigue and the 
effects of the climate, he determined on returning to 
Europe. Accordingly, on the 14th of July 1784, 
he embarked for Holland, and in a few months 
landed at Flushing. In January, the following 
year, he repaired to Paris, where his time and 
attention were entirely engrossed in arranging the 
materials and ornithological observations he had 
collected in his travels, and in preparing his jour- 
nals for publication. 
At that unfortunate period the French capital 
was the bloody scene of those revolutionary storms 
which were then preparing to spread devastation 
and ruin over the Continental kingdoms. Obscure 
and peaceful as were the occupations of Mons. Le 
Vaillant, he did not escape the calamities of that 
terrible era. The jealous rivalry and hatred of con- 
tending factions fixed upon him as an object of 
suspicion. He was thrown into prison in the year 
1798, and must inevitably have added another to 
the thousand victims of the guillotine, had not the 
overthrow of the notorious Robespierre paved the 
