Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume X.djvu/294

 288 LEDYARD in connection with Mazzini, of a plot against the life of Napoleon III., and was a second time sentenced to transportation. He was also specially excepted from the proclamation of amnesty issued by the emperor in 1860, and again from that issued in 1869. In the latter year the wing of the radical party of which Rochef ort was the leader endeavored to enlist him in their cause, but he refused to lend his name to their support. In consequence of this the Ollivier ministry, in January, 1870, re- voked the exception made against him in the decrees of amnesty, and he returned to France in March. During the siege of Paris he spoke a few times at radical banquets, and during the insurrection of Oct. 31 he was chosen a mem- ber of the committee of public safety, but did not appear at the h6tel de ville. At the elec- tion of Feb. 8, 1871, he was chosen a member of the national assembly, but resigned on the 19th, on the ground that the election held in such disastrous circumstances did not indicate the free choice of the electors. He remained for some time in retirement, but in March, 1874, was returned to the national assembly from the department of Yaucluse. He is now very rich, having recovered property long withheld from him. LEI) YARD, John, an American traveller, born in Groton, Conn., in 1751, died in Cairo, Egypt, Jan. 17, 1789. He lost his father in early child- hood, and after an ineffectual attempt to pur- sue the study of the law, at his mother's re- quest he entered Dartmouth college in 1772, with a view of fitting himself for missionary duty among the Indians. The restraints of this mode of life proving irksome, he absented him- self at one time from college for several months, during which he visited the Indians of the Six Nations; and finally, abandoning the idea of becoming a missionary, he embarked on the Connecticut river in a canoe and floated down to Hartford. After a brief experience as a theological student, he shipped at New London as a common sailor in a vessel bound for the Mediterranean, and at Gibraltar enlisted in a British regiment, but was discharged at the re- quest of his captain. Returning to New Lon- don at the end of a year, he embarked soon after at New York for England, and arrived in London just as Capt. Cook was about to sail on his third and last voyage around the world. Having procured an introduction to Cook, he was engaged for the expedition and made cor- poral of marines. Of this voyage he kept a private journal, which in accordance with a general order of the government was taken from him on the return of the expedition to England. Subsequently he wrote out from recollection, assisted by a brief sketch issued under the sanction of the admiralty, an ac- count of the expedition, which was published in Hartford in 1783. During the two years succeeding his return to England he remained in the British naval service, but steadily re- fused to take arms against his native country. In December, 1782, being in a British man-of- war off Long Island, he found means to escape, and revisited his friends after an absence of eight years. Having spent many months in fruitless endeavors to fit out an expedition to the N. "W. coast, which he was the first of his countrymen to propose, he embarked for Eu- rope in June, 1784, in the hope of finding there the means of carrying his project into effect. He spent a long time in negotiations at Lorient and Paris, at each of which strong hopes were held out to him ; but being finally disappointed, he determined to carry out his original design by a journey through northern Europe and Asia, and across Behring strait to the west- ern hemisphere. After further delays and dis- appointments, he was supplied with a small sum of money by Sir Joseph Banks and others, and departed on his long overland journey in the latter part of 1786. Arriving at Stockholm, he attempted to cross the gulf of Bothnia on the ice to Abo in Finland, but was met by open water in the middle. He immediately altered his course, and in the dead of winter walked around the whole coast of the gulf, arriving in St. Petersburg in the latter part of March with- out money, shoes, or stockings. This jour- ney of upward of 1,400 m. was accomplished in less than seven weeks. After a delay of several weeks he procured his passport from the empress, and received permission to ac- company Dr. Brown, a Scotchman in the Rus- sian service, as far as Barnaul in southern Si- beria, a distance of about 3,000 m. Here he parted with his companion, and proceeded to Irkutsk, whence he sailed in a small boat 1,400 m. down the river Lena to Yakutsk. Permis- sion to proceed to Okhotsk being refused, on the ground that the season was too far ad- vanced, it being then the latter part of Septem- ber, he accompanied a Capt. Billings, in the Rus- sian service, Jback to Irkutsk, where on Feb. 24, 1788, he was arrested by order of the empress. Accompanied by two guards, he was conducted with all speed to the frontiers of Poland, and there dismissed, with an intimation that he would be hanged if he reentered Russia. The reason for this summary expulsion of Ledyard from the Russian dominions has never been satisfactorily explained. He found his way back to London in the spring, to use his own words, "disappointed, ragged, and penniless, but with a whole heart," and was cordially re- ceived by Sir Joseph Banks and others who had befriended him. Undaunted by previous adversities, he eagerly accepted an offer made to him by the association for promoting the discovery of the inland parts of Africa, to un- dertake an expedition into the interior of that continent ; and when asked how soon he would be ready to set out, replied, " To-morrow morn- ing." He departed from England in the lat- ter part of June, intending to cross the Af- rican continent in a westerly direction from Sennaar, and had proceeded as far as Cairo when he was attacked by a bilious disorder