worth in the world. The man who is insensible of a generous action could be no desirable companion in any circumstances of life; but to be linked with such an individual in traversing a foreign land would have been a curse which few who have not experienced a similar calamity can conceive.
Having at the same time bade adieu to his money and the graceless major, he began to experience the effects of his folly; for had he not, by singular good fortune, found a merchant who consented to accept a bill on a friend in London, and pay him the amount, his travels must have terminated where he was. This supply, however, enabled him to pursue his route.
On arriving at Stockholm, Ledyard found that the Gulf of Bothnia was neither sufficiently frozen to enable him to cross it upon the ice, nor yet free enough from ice to be navigable. Under these circumstances he formed the daring resolution of travelling round the gulf, a distance of twelve hundred miles, "over trackless snows, in regions thinly peopled, where the nights are long, and the cold intense,—and all this to gain no more than fifty miles." Accordingly, he set out for Tornea, in the depth of winter, on foot, with little money in his pocket, and no friends to whom he could apply when his small stock should be exhausted. Of this part of his travels no account remains. Other travellers who have visited Tornea in winter, under the most favourable circumstances, describe in tremendous colours the horrors of the place. "The place," says Maupertuis, "on our arrival on the 30th of December, had really a most frightful aspect. Its little houses were buried to the tops in snow, which, if there had been any daylight, must have effectually shut it out. But the snow continually falling, or ready to fall, for the most part hid the sun the few moments that he might have showed himself at midday. In the month of January the cold was increased to the
