The American Encyclopedia of History, Biography and Travel / Comprising Ancient and Modern History: the Biography of Eminent Men of Europe and America, and the Lives of Distinguished Travelers.

by Thomas H. Prescott

JOHN LEDYARD.

John Ledyard was born about 1750, at Groton, Mass., and after having received a good education, and passed some time among the Indians of America, for the purpose of studying their manners, went to Europe about the year 1776, and made the tour of the world with Captain Cook, as corporal of a troop of marines. On his return to England in 1780, he formed the design of penetrating from the north-western to the eastern coast of America; and, after some conversation on the subject with Sir Joseph Banks, who furnished him with some money, which he expended in sea stores, with the intention of sailing to Nootka Sound, he altered his mind, and determined on traveling overland to Kamschatka, from whence the passage is very short to the opposite shore of America. Accordingly, towards the close of the year 1786, he started with only ten guineas in his pocket, and on his arrival at Stockholm, he attempted to traverse the gulf of Bothnia on the ice, but finding the water unfrozen, when he came to the middle, he returned to Stockholm, and proceeding northward, walked to the arctic circle, and passing round the head of the gulf, descended on its eastern side to St. Petersburgh, where he arrived in March, 1787, without shoes and stockings, which he was unable to purchase. In this state, however, he was treated with great attention by the Portuguese ambassador, who often invited him to dinner, and procured him an advance of twenty guineas on a bill drawn on Sir Joseph Banks, and finally obtained him permission to accompany a convoy of provisions to Yakutz, where he was recognized and kindly received by Captain Billings, whom he had known in Cook’s vessel, and with whom he returned to Irkutsk.

From hence he proceeded to Ocsakow, on the coast of the Kamschatkan Sea, whence, in the spring, he intended to have passed over to that peninsula, and to have embarked on the eastern side, in one of the Russian vessels trading to America; but finding the navigation obstructed he returned to Yakutz, to await the termination of the winter. His intentions, however, were suddenly frustrated by the arrival of an order from the empress for his arrest, which took place in January, 1788, without any reason being assigned for such a proceeding. He was deprived of his papers, placed in a sledge, and under the guard of two cossacks, conducted through the desert of Siberia and Tartary, to the frontiers of Poland, where he was left, covered with rags and vermin, and prohibited from returning to Russia on pain of death. In this situation he set out for Kœnigsberg, on arriving at which town, he obtained five guineas, by drawing a bill in the same manner as before, with which sum he proceeded to England. On his arrival, he called on Sir Joseph Banks, who proposed to him to undertake a voyage to Africa, to discover the source of the river Niger, at the expense of the society for making discoveries in that part of the world; an offer he accepted with avidity, and being asked when he would be ready to set out, he exclaimed, ‘To-morrow morning!’ On the 30th of June, 1788, he embarked for Calais, passed through France to Marseilles, reached Alexandria on the 5th of August, and on the 19th arrived at Cairo, where he had almost completed the preparations for his departure to Senar, when he was seized with a billious fever, and died in the latter end of the following October.

Mr. Ledyard was a man of extraordinary vigor both of mind and body, and no record exists of a more bold and perserving adventurer. In person he was of the middle stature, strong and active; and in manners, though unpolished, pleasing and urbane. ‘Little attentive,’ says his biographer ‘to deference of rank, he seemed to consider all men as his equals, and as such he respected them. His genius, though uncultivated and irregular, was original and comprehensive. Ardent in his wishes, yet calm in his deliberations; daring in his purposes, but guarded in his measures; impatient of control, yet capable of strong endurance; adventurous beyond the conception of ordinary men, yet wary and considerate, and attentive to all precautions; he seemed to be formed by nature for achievements of hardihood and peril.’ He appears to have undergone much sufferings during his Siberian tour, and, like Mr. Park, more than once owed his life to the kindness of women. ‘In wandering,’ he says, in his journal, ‘orve the plains of inhospitable Denmark, through honest Sweden, and frozen Lapland, rude and churlish Finland, unprincipled Russia, and the wide-spread regions of the wandering Tartar; if hungry, dry, cold, wet, or sick, the women have ever been friendly to me, and uniformly so; and to add to this virtue, these actions have been performed in so free and kind a manner, that if I was dry, I drank the sweetest draught; and if hungry, I ate the coarsest morsel with a double relish.’

He left some manuscripts behind, which were printed in London a few years after his death, in a work called Memoirs of the Society instituted for encouraging Discoveries in the Interior of Africa. A work, entitled Voyages de MM. Ledyard et Lucas, en Afrique, suivis d’extraits d’autres voyages, was also printed at Paris in 1804. Mr. Ledyard, in his journal, evinces great powers of observation, and a sound judgment and understanding. Some idea of his sufferings may be formed, in reading the following extract: ‘I have known,’ he writes, ‘both hunger and nakedness to the utmost extremity of human suffering. I have known what it is to have food given me as charity to a madman; and I have at times been obliged to shelter myself under the miseries of that character, to avoid a heavier calamity. My distresses have been greater than I have ever owned, or ever will own, to any man. Such evils are terrible to bear; but they never yet had power to turn me from my purpose. If I live, I will faithfully perform, in its utmost extent, my engagements to the Society; and if I perish in the attempt, my honor will still be safe, for death cancels all bonds.’

JOHN BAPTIST BELZONI.

John Baptist Belzoni was born about 1780, at Padua, in Italy, and passed the greater part of his youth at Rome, where he was preparing himself to become a monk, when, he observes, ‘the sudden entry of the French into that city, altered the course of my education, and being destined to travel, I have been a wanderer ever since.’ In 1803, he visited England and married; when, having but scanty means of subsistence, he went to Scotland and Ireland, and exhibited, at various theatres, a series of experiments in hydraulics, a science to which he had devoted much of his time in Italy. Finding, however, that he received but little profit from these exhibitions, he determined on a public display of his strength, which he put forth in feats that astonished and attracted crowded audiences wherever he appeared. Though, at that time, very young, he was six feet seven inches in height; and such was his elephantine power, that he could walk across the stage with no less than two-and-twenty persons attached by straps to different parts of his body. In 1812, he exhibited at Lisbon and at Madrid; and sailed afterwards to Malta, whence, he set out for Cairo, for the purpose of making a machine for raising water out of the Nile to water the bashaw’s gardens. Whilst on his way to the palace, he received so severe a blow on the leg, that he was confined to his bed thirty days before he could be introduced to the bashaw; who merely observed, on being told of Belzoni’s wound, ‘that such accidents could not be avoided where there were troops.’

Having concluded an agreement to make a machine which should enable one ox to raise as much water as was drawn previously by four, he, after much difficulty and obstruction on the part of those whose cattle were employed in the gardens, completed his work, and demonstrated with great success, a practical experiment of its power. The opposition, however, of the Arabs to the use of his machine, which they had materially damaged, induced Belzoni to relinquish his projects concerning it, and to undertake, at the suggestion of Mr. Salt and Mr. Burckhardt, an expedition to Thebes, for the purpose of removing an enormous bust, to which they had given the name of ‘the younger Memnon.’

‘It has been erroneously stated,’ says Belzoni, ‘that I was regularly employed by Mr. Salt for the purpose of bringing the colossal bust from Thebes to Alexandria. I positively deny that I was ever engaged by him in any shape whatever, either by words or writing, as I have proofs of the case being on the contrary. When I ascended the Nile, the first and second time, I had no other idea in my mind, but that I was making researches for antiquities which were to be placed in the British Museum; and it is naturally to be supposed, that I would not have made these excursions, had I been aware that all I found was for the benefit of a gentleman whom I never had the pleasure to see before in my life.’

Our traveler, accompanied by his wife, left Boolak on the 30th of June, 1815, examined the ruins of ancient Antinoe, and arrived at Ashoumain, where he met with the first remains of Egyptian architecture, which he supposes to have been of a date anterior to those of Thebes. Having arrived at Siout, he requested of the bashaw’s physician, permission to employ the workmen necessary to remove the head of Memnon; but not receiving a favorable reply, he, by means of his interpreter, procured the requisite assistance, and after viewing the tombs of Issus, proceeded to Thebes. On his way thither, he visited, near Dendera, the Temple of Tentyra, before which he remained seated some time, lost in admiration, at ‘the singularity of its preservation, and the extent and magnificence of its structure.’ On his return to Dendera, the inhabitants insisted on detaining his interpreter, imagining him to be the same who had joined the French army, some years ago, and declaring ‘that he had been long enough among Christian dogs.’ With much difficulty he procured the man’s release, and in a few days, came in sight of the ruins of Thebes, of which he thus writes:—​‘The most sublime ideas that can be formed from the most magnificenct specimens of our present architecture, would give a very incorrect picture of these ruins: for such is the difference, not only in magnitude, but in form, proportion, and construction, that even the pencil can convey but a faint idea of the whole. It appeared to me like entering a city of giants, who, after a long conflict, were all destroyed, leaving the ruins of their various temples as the only proofs of their former existence.’ After pausing with wonder before the two colossal figures in the plain, he proceeded to examine the bust, which it was the object of his expedition to remove. ‘I found it,’ he observes, ‘near the remains of its body and chair, with its face upwards, and apparently smiling on me, at the thought of being taken to England.’ Finding the distance to his boat on the Nile too far to go every night, he built a small hut with the stones of the Memnonium, in which, with Mrs. Belzoni, he determined to remain till he had accomplished the removal of the bust. This, after much difficulty and persuasion, he procured sufficient men to raise from the ground; ‘which,’ says Belzoni, ‘so astonished the Arabs, that, though it was the effect of their own efforts, they said it was the devil that did it.’ On the 5th of August, he reached, with the head, that part of the land which he was afraid of being prevented from crossing by the rising of the water; and on the 12th, he observes, ‘Thank God, the young Memnon arrived on the bank of the Nile.’ Next day he entered a cave in the mountains of Gornou, for the purpose of taking out a sarcophagus which had been mentioned to him by Mr. Drouetti; and which, after having more than once lost his way in the different avenues that led to it, he was preparing to remove, when the Arabs, who were working for him, were put into prison by the cacheff of Erments, who replied, on his complaining of such conduct, ‘that the sarcophagus had been sold to the French consul, and that no one else should have it.’