of the dispute with the American colonies, he was employed in the Ardent, of sixty guns, in cruising, with other vessels, in the Bay of Biscay; and, not long before the commencement of hostilities with France, was promoted to the Courageux, of seventy-four guns. He served in this ship during the whole of the war, except when his attendance was required in parliament or at the board of admiralty. He was warmly engaged in the action with the French fleet off Ushant, on the 27th of July, 1778, and had nineteen men killed or wounded.

During the years 1779 and 1780, he was employed on the home station; and, on the 4th of January following, being on a cruise, he captured the Minerva, of thirty-two guns and three hundred and sixteen men, which had been previously taken from the English. He was next sent to make an attempt upon the fort of Flushing; but the enemy being apprized of the fact before an attack had been made, the enterprise was abandoned. In the following spring, he accompanied Viceadmiral Darby, and, in 1782, went with Lord Howe, to Gibraltar; where, in the encounter on the 20th of October, with the combined fleet, off the straits, he led the division of the commander-in chief, and had one midshipman killed and four seamen wounded. Soon after the return of the fleet, peace ensued,

and the Courageux being paid off, his lordship did not accept of any further naval command.

In 1784, he was returned to parliament for Newark-upon-Trent; in the month of April, was appointed joint paymaster-general of the forces; and, on the 18th of May, a commissioner for managing the affairs of India. These offices, as also that of a lord of trade and foreign plantations, he held till 1791. On the 16th of June, 1790, he was created a peer of Great Britain, by his former Irish title; and he died on the 10th of October, 1792. In consequence of his death without issue, the English title became extinct; but was renewed, in the person of his brother, in the year 1794. Few naval captains have been fortunate enough to attract so much of the public notice as Lord Mulgrave. He added, to a knowledge of his profession, the abilities of a statesman; and he was at great pains to improve his natural qualifications by industrious application. In private life, he was a man of the highest benevo lence and integrity. It is recorded of him, that the tailor on board the Courageux having been killed in an engagement with the French fleet, his lordship, in compliance with a promise made to the poor fellow in his dying moments, provided handsomely for his widow, and became the protector of his children.

SAMUEL HEARNE was born in London, in 1745, and, at the age of eleven, embarked on board a vessel under the command of Captain (afterwards Lord) Hood; with whom he was engaged in many successful victories against the French, and acquired the right to a considerable share of prizemoney, which he requested might be transmitted to his mother, who would know better than himself how to dispose of it." At the termination of the war, seeing little chance of his advancement in the king's navy, he quitted it, and entered the service of the Hudson's Bay Company, who soon

found him to be a most intelligent and enterprising auxiliary. In 1768, he made a voyage to the head of the bay, for the purpose of improving the cod fishery in that part; and, at the same time, made a very useful survey of the adjoining coasts. In the following year, he was appointed to head an expedition, the principal objects of which were to ascertain the situation of the Copper Mine River, and the possibility of a north-west passage. Accordingly, on the 6th of November, 1769, he set out, accompanied by four attendants; when, after having crossed the Seal River, and walked some time over the

barren grounds beyond it, the depth of the snow and scarcity of his provisions compelled him to return, having proceeded no farther than the sixty-fourth degree of latitude.

Undiscouraged by this failure, he immediately made arrangements for a second expedition; and, in February, 1770, resumed the route he had before taken, advancing slowly northward and westward in the pursuit of his object; determined, rather than leave it unattained, to perish by the famine to which he was constantly exposed. "Often," he says, "I fasted whole days and nights, twice upwards of three days, and once near seven days; during which I tasted not a mouthful of any thing, except a few cranberries, water, scraps of old leather, and burnt bones." In July, while between the sixty-third and sixty-fourth degrees of latitude, he took up his winter quarters among a tribe of Indians, with whom he reinained till about the 11th of August. when a gust of wind blowing down and destroying his quadrant, he was compelled to return to Prince of Wales's Fort, where he arrived on the 25th of November, with the loss of his gun and several of his most useful effects, which had been stolen from him by some of

his attendants.

On the 7th of the following month, accompanied by an Indian chief, who pointed out a new route likely to lead to the discovery of the copper mine, he set out a third time, in the hope of ascertaining its situation. After determining the latitude of a place called Congecathawhachaga, he began, on the 15th of July, 1771 his survey of the Copper Mine River; in the course of which, he was more than once shocked at beholding the massacre of several parties of Esquimaux, by the Indians who accompanied him. After a journey on foot of nearly one thousand three hundred miles, he reached the mouth of the river, which, from the quantity of whalebone and seal-skins seen by him in the tents of the Esquimaux, he assumed must empty itself into the ocean; and that, consequently, he "had reached the northern shore of North America, and stood on the borders of the Hyperborean Sea." Mr Barrow however, in his Chronological History

of Voyages into the Arctic Regions, denies the conclusions of Hearne upon this point, and observes, "equally unsatisfactory is his statement as to the latitude of the Copper Mine River;" which, instead of 1 deg. 54 min., he cites the authorities of Dalrymple and other geographers to prove, could only be about sixty-nine degrees.

On leaving the Copper Mine River, Hearne proceeded, in a state of great agony from the soreness of his feet, as far as Lake Athapusco, or the Slave Lake; from which, in February, 1772, he departed eastward, and, on the 30th of June, arrived at Prince of Wales's Fort, after an absence of eighteen months, and having endured, in the latter part of his journey, the horrors of a famine, which destroyed several of his attendants, and nearly proved fatal to himself. On his return, he received the thanks of the Company and a handsome gratuity; and, in 1774, he established in the interior of the country, Cumberland Factory. In 1775, he became governor of the Prince of Wales's Fort; seven years after which, it was attacked and taken by a French squadron, under the command of La Perouse, who seized all the papers he found, but restored the manuscript of Hearne, on condition of its being printed on his arrival in England. After rebuilding, and putting in a good state of defence, the fort, he continued to reside there till 1787; in which year he returned to England, and prepared his journal for the press, which appeared about three years after his death, which took place some time in 1792. The work, containing a preface, in which he refutes the charges of Dalrymple as to the correctness of his latitudes, has been translated into most of the European languages; and besides throwing a light upon one of the most important points in geography, shows its author to have been a man of extraordinary courage and perseverance, of profound observation, and of a benevolent and enlightened mind. He had also intended to publish copies of a vocabulary of the language of the northern Indians, which he had completed in sixteen folio pages; but the original was, unfortunately, lost by a friend to whom he had lent it.

JOHN LEDYARD was born about 1750, at Groton, in the United States, and after having received a good education, and passed some time among the Indians of America, for the purpose of studying their manners, came into 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 travelling 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 recognised 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 deserts 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 Konigsbergh, 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 bilious fever, and died in the latter end of the following October.

Mr. Ledyard was a man of extraordinary vigour, both of mind and body, and no record exists of a more bold and persevering 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 controul, 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 suffering 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, "over 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 eat the coarsest morsel with a double relish."

He left some manuscripts behind him, 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 honour will still be safe, for death cancels all bonds."

some

GEORGE FORSTER, born time about the year 1750, went out as a writer, in the service of the East India Company, to Madras, whence, in 1782, he set out on his return to England, by way of Persia and Russia. Embarking on the Ganges, towards the latter end of June, he proceeded through Rajmahal, Monghee, and Patna, to Benares, where he spent three months in familiarity with the Hindoos, and in endeavouring to discover the origin of the Brahmin theology. After making an excursion to the fort of Biggighur, and assuming, for safety, a Georgian name, he proceeded through the Delhi country to Najebabad, where he represented himself as a Turkish merchant, and joined a kafila going to Kashmere. On the 6th of March, he crossed the river Jumma; and, on the 20th, arrived at a frontier town of the Punjab, or Five Rivers, whence, after a rest of three days,

he left the caravan; and, in company with his servant, and another Kashmerian, passed through the respective armies of two rajahs at war with each other; and, about the middle of April, reached Jummoo. Leaving this wealthy and commercial city, he set out, on foot, towards Kashmere, which, after a fatiguing journey of ten days, he approached, on the 26th, at a time, he observes," when the trees, the apple, the pear, the peach, the apricot, the cherry, and mulberry, bore a variegated load of blossom. The clusters also of the red and white rose," he continues, "with an infinite class of flowering shrubs, presented a view so gaily decked, that no extraordinary warmth of imagination was required to fancy that I stood, at least, on a province of fairy land."

Whilst residing at Kashmere, he was declared, by a Georgian, who noticed