y Sir Joseph Banks, Sir James Hall,
and some others. By this means he arrived at Hamburgh; whence he writes
to colonel Smith:--"Here I am with ten guineas exactly, and in perfect
health. One of my dogs is no more: I lost him in my passage up the river
Elbe, in a snow storm: I was out in it forty hours in an open boat."
At the tavern he went to, he learnt that a Major Langhorn, an American
officer, "a very good kind of a man," as his host described him, "and an
odd kind of a man, one who had travelled much, and fond of travelling in
his own way," had left his baggage behind, which was sent after him to
Copenhagen, but that, by some accident, it had never reached him. He had
left Hamburgh, the host told him, with one spare shirt, and very few
other articles of clothing, and added, that he must necessarily be in
distress. This man, thought Ledyard to himself, is just suited to be the
companion of my travels. The sympathy was irresistible; besides, he
might be in want of money; this was an appeal to his generosity, which
was equally irresistible to one who, like Ledyard, had ten guineas in
his pocket. "I will fly to him and lay my little all at his feet: he is
my countryman, a gentleman, and a traveller, and Copenhagen is not much
out of my way to Petersburgh," and, accordingly, in the month of
January, 1787, after a long and tedious journey, in the middle of
winter, through Sweden and Finland, we find him in Copenhagen, having
discovered Langhorn shut up in his room, without being able to stir
abroad for want of money and decent clothing. After remaining a
fortnight, he made a proposal to the Major to accompany him to St.
Petersburgh. "No: I esteem you, but no man on earth shall travel with me
the way I do," was the abrupt refusal to the man who had gone out of the
way several hundred miles to relieve his wants, and given him his last
shilling.
The visit being ended, and the amicable partnership dissolved, it became
necessary for our traveller to think of raising the supplies for a
journey round the Gulf of Bothnia, which was now rendered impassable,
the distance being not less than twelve hundred miles, chiefly over
trackless snows, in regions thinly peopled, the nights long, and the
cold intense; and, after all, gaining only, in the direct route, about
fifty miles. A Mr. Thompson accepted his bill on Colonel Smith, for a
sum which, he says, "has saved me from perdition, and will enable me to
reach Petersburgh." This j
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