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(**Typo for "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 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
