M. de Bougainville was also, whenever possible, without such delays as would prejudice the main object of the expedition, to take hydrographic surveys, and to collect information upon the commerce, productions, and means of exchange, of the countries visited. Two vessels were placed under the orders of M. de Bougainville. One, the _Thetis_, was an entirely new frigate, carrying forty-four cannons and three hundred sailors, no French frigate of this strength, except the _Boudeuse_, having ever before accomplished the voyage round the world; the other, the sloop _Esperance_, had twenty carronades upon the deck, and carried a hundred and twenty seamen. The first of these vessels was under the direct orders of Baron de Bougainville, and his staff consisted of picked officers, amongst whom we may mention Longueville, Lapierre, and Baudin, afterwards captain, vice-admiral, and rear-admiral. The _Esperance_ was commanded by Frigate-Captain De Nourquer du Camper, who, as second in command of the frigate _Cleopatra_, had already explored a great part of the course of the new expedition. It numbered among its officers, Turpin, afterwards vice-admiral, deputy, and aide-de-camp of Louis Philippe; Eugene Penaud, afterwards general officer, and Mederic Malavois, the future governor of Senegal. Not one notable scientific man, such as those who had been billeted in such numbers on the _Naturalist_ and other circumnavigating vessels, had embarked upon those of Baron de Bougainville, to whom it was a constant matter of regret, a regret intensified by the fact that the medical officers, with so many under their care, could not be long absent from the vessels when in port. M. de Bougainville's journal of the voyage opens with this judicious remark:-- "It was not many years ago a dangerous enterprise to make a voyage round the world, and scarce half a century has elapsed since the time when an expedition of this kind would have sufficed to reflect glory upon the man who directed it. This was 'the good old time,' the golden age of the circumnavigator, and the dangers and privations against which he had to struggle were repaid a hundredfold, when, rich in valuable discoveries, he hailed on his return the shores of his native land. But this is all over now; the _prestige_ has gone, and we make our tour of the globe nowadays as we should then have made that of France." What would Baron Yves-Hyacinth Potentien de Bougainville, the son of the vice-admiral, senator, and member of the _Institut_, say to-day to our admirable steamships of perfect form, and charts of such minute exactitude that distant voyages appear a mere joke.