perhaps years, will pass before you
and I may meet. If I fail, you will see me again soon, or never.
Farewell, my dear, excellent Margaret. Heaven shower down blessings on
you, and save me, that I may again and again testify my gratitude for
all your love and kindness.

Your affectionate brother,
R. Walton

Letter 2

Archangel, 28th March, 17--

To Mrs. Saville, England

How slowly the time passes here, encompassed as I am by frost and snow!
Yet a second step is taken towards my enterprise. I have hired a
vessel and am occupied in collecting my sailors; those whom I have
already engaged appear to be men on whom I can depend and are certainly
possessed of dauntless courage.

But I have one want which I have never yet been able to satisfy, and
the absence of the object of which I now feel as a most severe evil, I
have no friend, Margaret: when I am glowing with the enthusiasm of
success, there will be none to participate my joy; if I am assailed by
disappointment, no one will endeavour to sustain me in dejection. I
shall commit my thoughts to paper, it is true; but that is a poor
medium for the communication of feeling. I desire the company of a man
who could sympathize with me, whose eyes would reply to mine. You may
deem me romantic, my dear sister, but I bitterly feel the want of a
friend. I have no one near me, gentle yet courageous, possessed of a
cultivated as well as of a capacious mind, whose tastes are like my
own, to approve or amend my plans. How would such a friend repair the
faults of your poor brother! I am too ardent in execution and too
impatient of difficulties. But it is a still greater evil to me that I
am self-educated: for the first fourteen years of my life I ran wild
on a common and read nothing but our Uncle Thomas' books of voyages. At
that age I became acquainted with the celebrated poets of our own
country; but it was only when it had ceased to be in my power to derive
its most important benefits from such a conviction that I perceived the
necessity of becoming acquainted with more languages than that of my
native country. Now I am twenty-eight and am in reality more
illiterate than many schoolboys of fifteen. It is true that I have
thought more and that my daydreams are more extended and magnificent,
but they want (as the painters call it) KEEPING; and I greatly need a
friend who would have sense enough not to despise me as romantic, and
affection enough for me to e