a measure which most physicians are careful to expedite before they commence their peregrinations. He was honoured with the desired title at Leyden, in April, 1694, and custom requiring an inaugural discourse, he selected for the purpose ten of the most singular of those dissertations which he afterward published in his " Amœnitates."
This affair, which is still, I believe, considered important in Germany, being concluded, he returned to his own country, where his reputation and agreeable manners, together with the honour of being appointed physician to his sovereign, the Count de Lippe, overwhelmed him with so extreme a practice that he could command no leisure for digesting and arranging the literary materials, the only riches, as he observes, which he had amassed during his travels. However, busy as he was, he found opportunities of conciliating the favour of some fair Westphalian, who, he hoped, might deliver him from a portion of his cares. In this natural expectation he was disappointed. The lady, far from concurring with her lord in smoothing the rugged path of human life, was a second Xantippe, and, as one of Kæmpfer's nephews relates, poured more fearful storms upon his head than those which he had endured on the ocean. His marriage, in fact, was altogether unfortunate; for his three children, who might, perhaps, have made some amends for their mother's harshness, died in the cradle.
It was upwards of eighteen years after his return that he published the first fruits of his travels and researches—the "Amœnitates Exoticæ;" which, however, immediately diffused his reputation over the whole of Europe. But his health had already begun to decline, and before he could prepare for the press any further specimens of his capacity and learning, death stepped in, and snatched him away from the enjoyment of his fame and friends, on the 2d of November, 1716, in the 66th year of his age.
