Page:Works of Jules Verne - Parke - Vol 1.djvu/219

Rh St. Petersburg; nor of the Travelers' Club; nor even of the Polytechnic Institution, presided over by his friend Kockburn, the statistician. This gentleman proposed to him one day the following problem, with the intention to pay him a compliment: "Given the number of miles traversed by the doctor round the world, how much farther had the head moved than the feet in consequence of the difference in the length of radii." But Ferguson kept aloof from such learned people, and being rather of the acting and not of the talking disposition, he found his time better employed in exploration than in argument, in discovery rather than discussion.

It has been related that an Englishman came to Geneva with the intention to view the Lake. He got into one of those old carriages in which people sit at the sides like in an omnibus. Now it happened that this Englishman was seated with his back to the Lake. The carriage peacefully accomplished its round without his ever turning his head; and he returned home, charmed with the Lake of Geneva!

But Doctor Ferguson had turned round, and more than once during his travels, and to such purpose that he had seen nearly everything. In this, as in other things, he obeyed the dictates of his nature, and we have reason to believe that he was somewhat of a fatalist, but of a very orthodox pattern, relying upon himself as well as upon Providence. He used to say that he was impelled rather than attracted to his expeditions, and ran about the world something like a locomotive which does not direct its own course, but is directed by the route it follows.

"I do not pursue my way," the doctor would remark; "my way pursues me."

It is not astonishing, therefore, that he received the plaudits of the Royal Society without any show of emotion. He was superior to that, and being neither proud nor vain, he perceived nothing extraordinary in the proposition he had made to the President, and did not appear to notice the great effect he had produced.

After the meeting was dissolved the doctor was conducted to the Travelers' Club in Pall Mall, where a splendid banquet was prepared in his honor, the dimensions of the various dishes being proportionate to the importance of the guest, and the sturgeon, which was a prominent figure in