Chương Chương 1 · The End of a much-applauded Speech.—The Presentation of Dr. Samuel

. The End of a much-applauded Speech.—The Presentation of Dr. Samuel

Ferguson.—Excelsior.—Full-length Portrait of the Doctor.—A Fatalist

convinced.—A Dinner at the Travellers’ Club.—Several Toasts for the

Occasion.

There was a large audience assembled on the 14th of January, 1862, at

the session of the Royal Geographical Society, No. 3 Waterloo Place,

London. The president, Sir Francis M——, made an important communication

to his colleagues, in an address that was frequently interrupted by

applause.

This rare specimen of eloquence terminated with the following sonorous

phrases bubbling over with patriotism:

“England has always marched at the head of nations” (for, the reader

will observe, the nations always march at the head of each other), “by

the intrepidity of her explorers in the line of geographical

discovery.” (General assent). “Dr. Samuel Ferguson, one of her most

glorious sons, will not reflect discredit on his origin.” (“No,

indeed!” from all parts of the hall.)

“This attempt, should it succeed” (“It will succeed!”), “will complete

and link together the notions, as yet disjointed, which the world

entertains of African cartology” (vehement applause); “and, should it

fail, it will, at least, remain on record as one of the most daring

conceptions of human genius!” (Tremendous cheering.)

“Huzza! huzza!” shouted the immense audience, completely electrified by

these inspiring words.

“Huzza for the intrepid Ferguson!” cried one of the most excitable of

the enthusiastic crowd.

The wildest cheering resounded on all sides; the name of Ferguson was

in every mouth, and we may safely believe that it lost nothing in

passing through English throats. Indeed, the hall fairly shook with it.

And there were present, also, those fearless travellers and explorers

whose energetic temperaments had borne them through every quarter of

the globe, many of them grown old and worn out in the service of

science. All had, in some degree, physically or morally, undergone the

sorest trials. They had escaped shipwreck; conflagration; Indian

tomahawks and war-clubs; the fagot and the stake; nay, even the

cannibal maws of the South Sea Islanders. But still their hearts beat

high during Sir Francis M——’s address, which certainly was the finest

oratorical success that the Royal Geographical Society of London had

yet achieved.

But, in England, enthusiasm does not stop short with mere words. It

strikes off money faster than the dies of the Royal Mint itself. So a

subscription to encourage Dr. Ferguson was voted there and then, and it

at once attained the handsome amount of two thousand five hundred

pounds. The sum was made commensurate with the importance of the

enterprise.

A member of the Society then inquired of the president whether Dr.

Ferguson was not to be officially introduced.

“The doctor is at the disposition of the meeting,” replied Sir Francis.

“Let him come in, then! Bring him in!” shouted the audience. “We’d like

to see a man of such extraordinary daring, face to face!”

“Perhaps this incredible proposition of his is only intended to mystify

us,” growled an apoplectic old admiral.

“Suppose that there should turn out to be no such person as Dr.

Ferguson?” exclaimed another voice, with a malicious twang.

“Why, then, we’d have to invent one!” replied a facetious member of

this grave Society.

“Ask Dr. Ferguson to come in,” was the quiet remark of Sir Francis M——.

And come in the doctor did, and stood there, quite unmoved by the

thunders of applause that greeted his appearance.

He was a man of about forty years of age, of medium height and

physique. His sanguine temperament was disclosed in the deep color of

his cheeks. His countenance was coldly expressive, with regular

features, and a large nose—one of those noses that resemble the prow of

a ship, and stamp the faces of men predestined to accomplish great

discoveries. His eyes, which were gentle and intelligent, rather than

bold, lent a peculiar charm to his physiognomy. His arms were long, and

his feet were planted with that solidity which indicates a great

pedestrian.

A calm gravity seemed to surround the doctor’s entire person, and no

one would dream that he could become the agent of any mystification,

however harmless.

Hence, the applause that greeted him at the outset continued until he,

with a friendly gesture, claimed silence on his own behalf. He stepped

toward the seat that had been prepared for him on his presentation, and

then, standing erect and motionless, he, with a determined glance,

pointed his right forefinger upward, and pronounced aloud the single

word—

“Excelsior!”

Never had one of Bright’s or Cobden’s sudden onslaughts, never had one

of Palmerston’s abrupt demands for funds to plate the rocks of the

English coast with iron, made such a sensation. Sir Francis M——‘s

address was completely overshadowed. The doctor had shown himself

moderate, sublime, and self-contained, in one; he had uttered the word

of the situation—

“Excelsior!”

The gouty old admiral who had been finding fault, was completely won

over by the singular man before him, and immediately moved the

insertion of Dr. Ferguson’s speech in “The Proceedings of the Royal

Geographical Society of London.”

Who, then, was this person, and what was the enterprise that he

proposed?

Ferguson’s father, a brave and worthy captain in the English Navy, had

associated his son with him, from the young man’s earliest years, in

the perils and adventures of his profession. The fine little fellow,

who seemed to have never known the meaning of fear, early revealed a

keen and active mind, an investigating intelligence, and a remarkable

turn for scientific study; moreover, he disclosed uncommon address in

extricating himself from difficulty; he was never perplexed, not even

in handling his fork for the first time—an exercise in which children

generally have so little success.

His fancy kindled early at the recitals he read of daring enterprise

and maritime adventure, and he followed with enthusiasm the discoveries

that signalized the first part of the nineteenth century. He mused over

the glory of the Mungo Parks, the Bruces, the Caillies, the

Levaillants, and to some extent, I verily believe, of Selkirk (Robinson

Crusoe), whom he considered in no wise inferior to the rest. How many a

well-employed hour he passed with that hero on his isle of Juan

Fernandez! Often he criticised the ideas of the shipwrecked sailor, and

sometimes discussed his plans and projects. He would have done

differently, in such and such a case, or quite as well at least—of that

he felt assured. But of one thing he was satisfied, that he never

should have left that pleasant island, where he was as happy as a king

without subjects—no, not if the inducement held out had been promotion

to the first lordship in the admiralty!

It may readily be conjectured whether these tendencies were developed

during a youth of adventure, spent in every nook and corner of the

Globe. Moreover, his father, who was a man of thorough instruction,

omitted no opportunity to consolidate this keen intelligence by serious

studies in hydrography, physics, and mechanics, along with a slight

tincture of botany, medicine, and astronomy.

Upon the death of the estimable captain, Samuel Ferguson, then

twenty-two years of age, had already made his voyage around the world.

He had enlisted in the Bengalese Corps of Engineers, and distinguished

himself in several affairs; but this soldier’s life had not exactly

suited him; caring but little for command, he had not been fond of

obeying. He, therefore, sent in his resignation, and half botanizing,

half playing the hunter, he made his way toward the north of the Indian

Peninsula, and crossed it from Calcutta to Surat—a mere amateur trip

for him.

From Surat we see him going over to Australia, and in 1845

participating in Captain Sturt’s expedition, which had been sent out to

explore the new Caspian Sea, supposed to exist in the centre of New

Holland.

Samuel Ferguson returned to England about 1850, and, more than ever

possessed by the demon of discovery, he spent the intervening time,

until 1853, in accompanying Captain McClure on the expedition that went

around the American Continent from Behring’s Straits to Cape Farewell.

Notwithstanding fatigues of every description, and in all climates,

Ferguson’s constitution continued marvellously sound. He felt at ease

in the midst of the most complete privations; in fine, he was the very

type of the thoroughly accomplished explorer whose stomach expands or

contracts at will; whose limbs grow longer or shorter according to the

resting-place that each stage of a journey may bring; who can fall

asleep at any hour of the day or awake at any hour of the night.

Nothing, then, was less surprising, after that, than to find our

traveller, in the period from 1855 to 1857, visiting the whole region

west of the Thibet, in company with the brothers Schlagintweit, and

bringing back some curious ethnographic observations from that

expedition.

During these different journeys, Ferguson had been the most active and

interesting correspondent of the _Daily Telegraph_, the penny newspaper

whose circulation amounts to 140,000 copies, and yet scarcely suffices

for its many legions of readers. Thus, the doctor had become well known

to the public, although he could not claim membership in either of the

Royal Geographical Societies of London, Paris, Berlin, Vienna, or St.

Petersburg, or yet with the Travellers’ Club, or even the Royal

Polytechnic Institute, where his friend the statistician Cockburn ruled

in state.

The latter _savant_ had, one day, gone so far as to propose to him the

following problem: Given the number of miles travelled by the doctor in

making the circuit of the Globe, how many more had his head described

than his feet, by reason of the different lengths of the radii?—or, the

number of miles traversed by the doctor’s head and feet respectively

being given, required the exact height of that gentleman?

This was done with the idea of complimenting him, but the doctor had

held himself aloof from all the learned bodies—belonging, as he did, to

the church militant and not to the church polemical. He found his time

better employed in seeking than in discussing, in discovering rather

than discoursing.

There is a story told of an Englishman who came one day to Geneva,

intending to visit the lake. He was placed in one of those odd vehicles

in which the passengers sit side by side, as they do in an omnibus.

Well, it so happened that the Englishman got a seat that left him with

his back turned toward the lake. The vehicle completed its circular

trip without his thinking to turn around once, and he went back to

London delighted with the Lake of Geneva.

Doctor Ferguson, however, had turned around to look about him on his

journeyings, and turned to such good purpose that he had seen a great

deal. In doing so, he had simply obeyed the laws of his nature, and we

have good reason to believe that he was, to some extent, a fatalist,

but of an orthodox school of fatalism withal, that led him to rely upon

himself and even upon Providence. He claimed that he was impelled,

rather than drawn by his own volition, to journey as he did, and that

he traversed the world like the locomotive, which does not direct

itself, but is guided and directed by the track it runs on.

“I do not follow my route;” he often said, “it is my route that follows

me.”

The reader will not be surprised, then, at the calmness with which the

doctor received the applause that welcomed him in the Royal Society. He

was above all such trifles, having no pride, and less vanity. He looked

upon the proposition addressed to him by Sir Francis M——as the simplest

thing in the world, and scarcely noticed the immense effect that it

produced.

When the session closed, the doctor was escorted to the rooms of the

Travellers’ Club, in Pall Mall. A superb entertainment had been

prepared there in his honor. The dimensions of the dishes served were

made to correspond with the importance of the personage entertained,

and the boiled sturgeon that figured at this magnificent repast was not

an inch shorter than Dr. Ferguson himself.

Numerous toasts were offered and quaffed, in the wines of France, to

the celebrated travellers who had made their names illustrious by their

explorations of African territory. The guests drank to their health or

to their memory, in alphabetical order, a good old English way of doing

the thing. Among those remembered thus, were: Abbadie, Adams, Adamson,

Anderson, Arnaud, Baikie, Baldwin, Barth, Batouda, Beke, Beltram, Du

Berba, Bimbachi, Bolognesi, Bolwik, Belzoni, Bonnemain, Brisson,

Browne, Bruce, Brun-Rollet, Burchell, Burckhardt, Burton, Cailland,

Caillie, Campbell, Chapman, Clapperton, Clot-Bey, Colomieu, Courval,

Cumming, Cuny, Debono, Decken, Denham, Desavanchers, Dicksen, Dickson,

Dochard, Du Chaillu, Duncan, Durand, Duroule, Duveyrier, D’Escayrac, De

Lauture, Erhardt, Ferret, Fresnel, Galinier, Galton, Geoffroy,

Golberry, Hahn, Halm, Harnier, Hecquart, Heuglin, Hornemann, Houghton,

Imbert, Kauffmann, Knoblecher, Krapf, Kummer, Lafargue, Laing,

Lafaille, Lambert, Lamiral, Lampriere, John Lander, Richard Lander,

Lefebvre, Lejean, Levaillant, Livingstone, MacCarthy, Maggiar, Maizan,

Malzac, Moffat, Mollien, Monteiro, Morrison, Mungo Park, Neimans,

Overweg, Panet, Partarrieau, Pascal, Pearse, Peddie, Penney, Petherick,

Poncet, Prax, Raffenel, Rabh, Rebmann, Richardson, Riley, Ritchey,

Rochet d’Hericourt, Rongawi, Roscher, Ruppel, Saugnier, Speke,

Steidner, Thibaud, Thompson, Thornton, Toole, Tousny, Trotter, Tuckey,

Tyrwhitt, Vaudey, Veyssière, Vincent, Vinco, Vogel, Wahlberg,

Warrington, Washington, Werne, Wild, and last, but not least, Dr.

Ferguson, who, by his incredible attempt, was to link together the

achievements of all these explorers, and complete the series of African

discovery.