LEDYARD, JOHN, a remarkable person in the history of geo graphical discovery, was born at Groton in Conuecticut, and educated at Dartmouth College, New Hampshire. Having lost his father, and being apparently friendless, he had not the means, if he had the wish, to follow up his studies. Some years he spent among the Indians, a good school of preparation for his future toils. Ho worked his passage from New York to London iu 1771 as a common sailor; and in 1776 sailed with Captain Cook, on his third voyage, iu quality of corporal of marines, and was with him when he was murdered ; and some years later wrote an interesting account of this voyage. While thus engaged ho conceived the bold scheme of traversing the unknown regions of America, from the neighbourhood of Nootka Sound to the eastern coast ; and so earnest was be, that being frustrated in his design of reaching the western shore of America by sea, he set out from England towards the cad of 1786, with ten guineas in his pocket, hoping to reach Kamtchatka, and thence effect a passage to America. According to Tucker's Life of Jefferson,' this scheme was suggested to Lodyard by Mr. Jefforsoo, then the American minister at Paris, who assisted him with money. He traversed Denmark and Sweden, passed round the head of the Gulf of Bothnia, after au unsuccessful attempt to cross it on the ice, and reached St. Peters burg in March 1787, without money, shoes, or stockings, having gone this immense distance on foot in an arctic winter. At St. Petersburg he obtained notice, money to the amount of twenty guineas, and permission to accompany a convoy of stores to Yakutsk in Siberia. But for some unexplained reason he was arrested there in January 1788, by the order of the Empress Catharine, while waiting for the spring, and conveyed to the frontier of Polaud, with a hint that he would be hauged if he re•enterod Russia. Ile found his way bank to England, after suffering great hardship. Still his adventurous spirit
was unbroken ; and, almost without resting, he eagerly closed with the proposal of the Association for promoting tho discovery of the inland parts of Africa, to undertake a journey into that region. There is a characteristic story, that on being asked how soon he could be ready to set out, be replied, " To-morrow morning." He left London, June 30, 1788 ; and travelling by Marseille and Alexandria, reached Cairo August 19. The ardent, persevering, intelligent spirit of inquiry shown in his first and only despatches raised high expecta tion of the value of his labours ; but these were cut short by his premature death, in that city, of a bilious disorder on the 17th of January 1789. His route was to have been from Sennaar westward, in the supposed direction of the Niger, so that be would have crossed that great continent in its widest part. From his scanty education and mode of travelling, Ledyard probably would have contributed little to scientific knowledge ; but his keenness of observation, vigour and endurance, mental and bodily ; and indifference to pain, hardship, and fatigue, fitted him admirably for a geographical pioneer; and his death, the first of many lives sacrificed to African discovery, excited a strong feeling of regret. "I have known," he said, shortly before leaving England for the last time, "hunger and nakedness to the utmost extremity of human suffering. I have known what it is to have food given 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 bad power to turn me from my purpose."