The sympathy and applause bestowed upon him by the public may be imagined from the fact that the narrative of his voyage went through four immense editions in a single year, was translated into seven European languages, and met with a far greater success than had ever fallen to the lot of any maritime journal. [Illustration: BYRON AT KING GEORGE'S ISLAND.] CHAPTER XLI. THE FIRST SCIENTIFIC VOYAGE OF CIRCUMNAVIGATION--THE DOLPHIN AND TAMAR--BYRON IN PATAGONIA--FALKLAND ISLANDS--ISLANDS OF DISAPPOINTMENT--ARRIVAL AT TINIAN--BYRON VERSUS ANSON--THE VOYAGE HOME--WALLIS AND CARTERET--THEIR OBSERVATIONS IN PATAGONIA--WALLIS AT TAHITI--A DESPERATE BATTLE--NAILS LOSE THEIR VALUE--A TAHITIAN ROMANCE--PITCAIRN'S ISLAND--QUEEN CHARLOTTE'S ISLANDS--NEW BRITAIN--THE VOYAGE HOME--A MAN-OF-WAR DESTROYED BY FIRE. In the year 1764, England was at peace with all the world, and his majesty George III. conceived an idea which till then had penetrated no royal brain,--that of sending out vessels upon voyages of discovery in the single view of extending the domain of science and contributing to the advance of geographical knowledge. Voyages had previously been undertaken for purposes either of conquest, colonization, pillage, or privateering; and discovery had usually been the result of accident, and was generally subordinate to the grand business of plunder and rapine. The king at once executed his design by giving the command of the Dolphin and Tamar--the former a man-of-war of twenty-four guns, and the latter a sloop of sixteen--to Commodore John Byron, who had been one of the wrecked captains of Anson's fleet in 1740. The vessels sailed from Plymouth on the 3d of July. Nothing of moment occurred during their passage to Rio Janeiro, if we except the fact that Byron noticed that no fish would come near his ship, though the sea was alive with them at a little distance,--a circumstance which he attributed to the Dolphin's copper sheathing. She was the first vessel upon which the experiment of coppering the bottom had been tried.