Avril defended [the] advantages of overland travel in his travel account entitled Voyage en divers états d'Europe et d'Asie, entrepris pour découvrir un nouveau chemin à la Chine (Paris: 1692), which was translated one year later in London as Travels into Divers Parts of Europe and Asia, Undertaken by the French King's Order to Discover a New Way by Land into China. Avril wrote it in 1690, in France. At this point, he may have collected a great deal of information on Eurasian geography, but he had not reached China or traveled east of Astrakhan! What had happened to Avril after arriving in Astrakhan June 1686 can perhaps best be described as a series of (very) unfortunate events. It started with a war in central Eurasia, blocking the direct route. Thus, Avril decided to travel to Moscow where he could join a Chinese merchant caravan on its way back to Beijing. Unfortunately, Jesuits had to go through great pains to travel legally across Russian Christian orthodox territory, and, supposedly because he did not hold the right papers and passport, Avril was turned back to Europe from Moscow. Rather than returning all the way to France, Avril waited in Poland for another travel companion and the right papers. He tried again the next year and he was turned back again. After that, he traveled to Constantinople, through Persia and the Ottoman Empire where he was arrested, released, and then fell seriously ill. Exhausted he finally returned to France where he wrote his travel account. After this five year long odyssey, Avril still argued that his overland route was faster and safer if only the Russians were a little more trusting ("good-natured") and would allow passage. During the mid 1690s Avril tried one last time to travel to China. This time, against all the principles defended in his earlier travel account, he boarded an English ship in Surat, India, which was to take him directly to southern China. To top off all unfortunate events described above, Philippe Avril died in a shipwreck August 18, 1698, not far from the coast of Taiwan. He never saw China.