CHAPTER I.
Proceedings of the Association from the Time of its Establishment, to that of the Departure of Mr. Ledyard.
The Association for Promoting the Discovery of the Interior Regions of Africa was formed on the 9th of June, in the year 1788; and on the same day a Committee of its Members was invested with the direction of its Funds, the management of its Correspondence, and the choice of the persons to whom the Geographical mission should be assigned.
Naturally anxious for the speedy attainment of the important object thus recommended to their care, an object made doubly interesting by the consideration of its having engaged the attention, and baffled the researches of the most inquisitive and the most powerful nations of antiquity, the Managers proceeded with the utmost ardour to the immediate execution of the Plan.
Two Gentlemen, whose qualifications appeared to be eminent, proposed to undertake the Adventure.
One of them, a Mr. Ledyard, was an American by birth, and seemed from his youth to have felt an invincible desire to make himself acquainted with the unknown, or imperfectly discovered regions of the globe. For several years he had lived with the Indians of America, had studied their manners, and had practised in their school the means of obtaining the protection, and of recommending himself to the favour of Savages. In the humble situation of a Corporal of Marines, to which he submitted rather than relinquish his pursuit, he had made, with Captain Cook, the Voyage of the World; and feeling on his return an anxious desire of penetrating from the North Western Coast of America, which Cook had partly explored, to the Eastern Coast, with which he himself was perfectly familiar, he determined to traverse the vast Continent from the Pacific to the Atlantic Ocean.
His first Plan for the purpose was that of embarking in a vessel which was then preparing to sail, on a Voyage of Commercial Adventure, to Nootka Sound, on the Western Coast of America; and with this view he expended in sea stores, the greatest part of the money which his chief benefactor Sir Joseph Banks (whose generous conduct the Writer of this Narrative has often heard him acknowledge) had liberally supplied. But the scheme being frustrated by the rapacity of a Custom-house Officer, who had seized and detained the vessel for reasons which on legal inquiry proved to be frivolous, he determined to travel over land to Kamschatka, from whence to the Western coast of America the passage is extremely short. With no more than ten guineas in his purse, which was all that he had left, he crossed the British Channel to Ostend, and by the way of Denmark and the Sound, proceeded to the capital of Sweden, from whence, as it was Winter, he attempted to traverse the Gulph of Bothnia on the ice, in order to reach Kamschatka by the shortest way; but finding, when he came to the middle of the sea, that the water was not frozen, he returned to Stockholm, and taking his course Northward, walked into the Arctic Circle; and passing round the head of the Gulph, descended on its Eastern side to Petersburgh.
There, he was soon noticed as an extraordinary man.—Without stockings, or shoes, and in too much poverty to provide himself with either, he received and accepted an invitation to dine with the Portugueze Ambassador. To this invitation it was probably owing that he was able to obtain the sum of twenty guineas for a bill on Sir Joseph Banks, which he confessed he had no authority to draw, but which, in consideration of the business that he had undertaken, and of the progress that he had made, Sir Joseph, he believed, would not be unwilling to pay. To the Ambassador’s interest it might also be owing that he obtained permission to accompany a detachment of Stores which the Empress had ordered to be sent to Yakutz, for the use of Mr. Billings, an Englishman, at that time in her service.