However, force was triumphant; but from that moment the souls of the natives were on fire, and revenge was determined on. A relation of the various incidents and small events by which the tragic action moved onwards to its completion would be incompatible with my present design. Captain Cook, accompanied by an armed force, in which Ledyard was included, went on shore for the purpose of making the king a prisoner, and of keeping him in confinement on board, until certain articles stolen by his subjects should be restored. The savages, with a boldness worthy of admiration, opposed his designs, and compelled him to retreat towards his boats. Here, as the marines were endeavouring to embark, a contest took place; stones were thrown by the natives; the English flew to their firearms; and a chief, rushing on with an iron dagger in his hand, stabbed Cook through the body. His guards, likewise, were all cut off excepting two, who escaped by swimming. The cannon of the Resolution were now fired at the crowd, and this produced an almost instantaneous retreat; though the savages, mindful even in the midst of danger of the gratification of their appetite, took care to carry along with them the bodies of their fallen enemies, in order, by feasting upon them at their leisure, to derive some trifling comfort from their disaster.
The business now was to retire as quickly as possible from the island, which they did; and having again entered Behring’s Strait, and sailed about for some time among the ices of the Polar Sea, they returned by way of China and the Cape of Good Hope to England, after an absence of four years and three months.
In 1782 Ledyard sailed on board an English man-of-war for America, not with a design to serve against his country, but determined on seizing the first occasion of escape which should offer itself. An opportunity soon occurred. On arriving at Long Island, then in the possession of the English, he obtained permission of seven days’ absence from the ship, for the purpose of seeing his mother, who then kept a boarding-house at Southold, occupied chiefly by British officers. “He rode up to the door, alighted, went in, and asked if he could be accommodated in her house as a lodger. She replied that he could, and showed him a room into which his baggage was conveyed. After having adjusted his dress he came out, and took a seat by the fire, in company with several other officers, without making himself known to his mother, or entering into conversation with any person. She frequently passed and repassed through the room, and her eye was observed to be attracted towards him with more than usual attention. He still remained silent. At last, after looking at him steadily for some minutes, she deliberately put on her spectacles, approached nearer to him, begging his pardon for her rudeness, and telling him that he so much resembled a son of hers who had been absent eight years, that she could not resist her inclination to view him more closely. The scene that followed may be imagined, but not described; for Ledyard had a tender heart, and affection for his mother was among its deepest and most constant emotions.”
He now visited his old friends and many of the places which youthful recollections rendered dear to him. He was everywhere well received, and employed the leisure which he now enjoyed for several months in writing an account of his voyage round the world with Captain Cook. But when this was done, many motives, among which want of money was not the least, urged him to enter upon some new plan of life. His favourite project at this time, and indeed throughout the remainder of his life, was a voyage of commerce and discovery to the north-western coast of America; and during the remainder of his stay in his native country he made numerous efforts to obtain wealthy co-operators in his design. Being constantly disappointed, however, he once more turned his thoughts towards Europe, where the spirit of speculation was bolder and more liberal, and proceeded to France. Here his projects were eagerly patronised, and as easily abandoned; and during a long stay both at L’Orient and Paris he subsisted by shifts and expedients, associating by turns with every variety of character, from Jefferson down to Paul Jones.
How he existed at all, unless upon the bounty of his friends, is altogether inexplicable. He was now reduced to the character of a mere adventurer, and his life during this period affords no incidents worthy of being described. An Englishman, who had given him fifteen guineas at St. Germain, shortly afterward invited him to London, and procured him a passage in a ship bound for the Pacific Ocean, with a promise from the captain that he would set him on shore upon any point of the north-west coast which he might choose. He now once more appeared to be verging towards the accomplishment of his dearest wishes. He embarked; the vessel sailed down the Thames, and put out to sea; but before they were out of sight of land the ship was brought back by an order from the government, and the voyage was finally abandoned.
Ledyard’s enthusiasm, however, in the prosecution of his designs, though it is probable that few could perceive the advantages to be derived from their accomplishment, procured him many friends in London; and it is said that a subscription was set on foot by Sir Joseph Banks, Dr. Hunter, Sir James Hall, and Colonel Smith. From the result of this measure we must inevitably infer one of two things,—either that the liberality of those gentlemen was exceedingly scanty, or that their opinion of Ledyard’s prudence was very low. From several circumstances which afterward took place the latter is the more probable inference. Be this as it may, we find him, on his arrival at Hamburgh, with no more than ten guineas in his pocket; and these, with reckless and unpardonable absurdity, he bestowed upon a Major Langhorn, an eccentric vagabond, who, after accepting his money and reducing him to beggary, coolly refused to bear him company on his journey to Petersburg, alleging as his excuse that he could travel in the way he did with no man upon earth. What his mode of travelling was I have no means of ascertaining; but from his conduct in this transaction it may be inferred, without any great stretch of uncharitableness, that Ledyard was fortunate in getting rid of such a companion at the expense of all he was worth in the world. The man who is insensible of a generous action could be no desirable companion in any circumstances of life; but to be linked with such an individual in traversing a foreign land would have been a curse which few who have not experienced a similar calamity can conceive.
Having at the same time bade adieu to his money and the graceless major, he began to experience the effects of his folly; for had he not, by singular good fortune, found a merchant who consented to accept a bill on a friend in London, and pay him the amount, his travels must have terminated where he was. This supply, however, enabled him to pursue his route.
On arriving at Stockholm, Ledyard found that the Gulf of Bothnia was neither sufficiently frozen to enable him to cross it upon the ice, nor yet free enough from ice to be navigable. Under these circumstances he formed the daring resolution of travelling round the gulf, a distance of twelve hundred miles, “over trackless snows, in regions thinly peopled, where the nights are long, and the cold intense,—and all this to gain no more than fifty miles.” Accordingly, he set out for Tornea, in the depth of winter, on foot, with little money in his pocket, and no friends to whom he could apply when his small stock should be exhausted. Of this part of his travels no account remains. Other travellers who have visited Tornea in winter, under the most favourable circumstances, describe in tremendous colours the horrors of the place. “The place,” says Maupertuis, “on our arrival on the 30th of December, had really a most frightful aspect. Its little houses were buried to the tops in snow, which, if there had been any daylight, must have effectually shut it out. But the snow continually falling, or ready to fall, for the most part hid the sun the few moments that he might have showed himself at midday. In the month of January the cold was increased to the extremity, that Reaumur’s mercurial thermometers, which in Paris, in the great frost of 1709, it was thought strange to see fall to fourteen degrees below the freezing point, were now down to thirty-seven. The spirit of wine in the others was frozen. If we opened the door of a warm room, the external air instantly converted all the air in it into snow, whirling it round in white vortices. If we went abroad, we felt as if the air were tearing our breasts to pieces.”
Such was the country through which Ledyard made his way to Petersburg, which he reached on the 20th of March, that is, within seven weeks from his leaving Stockholm, making the distance travelled over about two hundred miles per week upon an average. Here he was well received by Professor Pallas and other scientific men; and through the interest of Count Segur, the French ambassador, obtained the empress’s permission to traverse her vast dominions. As he was compelled to wait several months, however, for this indispensable document, and was destitute on his arrival at Petersburg of money, and almost of clothes, he drew a bill of twenty guineas on Sir Joseph Banks, which he was fortunate enough to get some one to discount. This enabled him to await the leisure of Catharine, who was too deeply plunged in her schemes of debauchery and ambition to afford a thought on a poor houseless wanderer like Ledyard. But at length the passport was granted; and a Dr. Brown happening at that moment to be proceeding with a quantity of stores to Yakutsk for the use of Mr. Billings, who was then employed by the empress in exploring the remoter parts of Siberia and Kamtschatka, our traveller obtained permission to accompany him.
They left Petersburg on the 1st of June, and in six days arrived at Moscow. Here they hired a kibitka, and proceeded at the same rapid rate towards Kazan, on the Volga, where they remained a week; and then set off on the full gallop for Tobolsk. It should be remarked, that Ledyard’s object in this journey was not to see the country, but to reach the north-west coast of America, where he hoped to make some useful discoveries, as quickly as possible; otherwise it would have been far wiser to have “made his legs his compasses,” at the risk of consuming years in the journey. In the vast plain which stretches from Moscow to the Ural Mountains there was, it is true, very little of the picturesque, and not much of the moral, to captivate the eye or interest the mind of a traveller; but there is no country the careful examination of which may not be made to yield both amusement and instruction. Ledyard, however, was not answerable for the rapidity of his movements; he accounted himself but too happy in being allowed to share Dr. Brown’s kibitka; and had it been in the empress’s power to have darted him across Siberia upon an iceberg, or astride upon a cloud, he would not have objected to the conveyance.