Enterprise and Adventure. Ralph Temple

he did not, besides defrauding them, insist on carrying off their little treasury of tolls. The want of refreshment was a minor evil. Having arrived in the Borough, Byron continues, "I took a coach and drove to Marlborough Street, where my friends had lived, but when I came there I found the house shut up. Having been absent so many years, and in all that time never having heard a word from home, I knew not who was dead or who was living, or where to go next, or even how to pay the coachman;" but, fortunately, he remembered a linendraper, not far distant, with whom his family had dealt, and who kindly relieved him from this difficulty.

      He then inquired of some persons after his family, ​and there learnt that his sister, Lady Isabella Byron, had married, three years before, the Earl of Carlisle, and he was directed to their house—a fine old red brick mansion, which still stands in the neighbourhood of Soho Square. He immediately walked to this house and knocked at the door; but the footman refused to take in his name or believe in his pretended relationship to the family. In fact, there was not much in his appearance which denoted aristocratic connections. His dress was a strange medley of worn-out clothing, half French and half Spanish, and he wore a huge pair of boots, picked up in his travels, which were now covered with dirt. Altogether, Robinson Crusoe himself could scarcely have been a more unlikely person to present himself at the door of an English nobleman's mansion, or announce himself as the brother of my lady the Countess. The man was about to shut the door in his face, when the earnestness of the intruder's manner finally induced him to admit him. "I need not acquaint my readers," adds Byron, "with what surprise and joy my sister received me. She immediately furnished me with money sufficient to appear like the rest of my countrymen, till which time I could not be properly said to have finished all the extraordinary scenes which a series of unfortunate adventures had kept me in for the space of five years and upwards." In fact, although the wanderers included the captain of the lost man-of-war and the brother of an English nobleman, and although their story had been for several years known in various cities of South America, and also for some time in Brest, they were themselves the first to bring to the Admiralty tidings of their marvellous escape. Byron ​became afterwards distinguished in his profession, in which he rose to the rank of vice-admiral; but his evil fortune at sea pursued him, until the superstitious sailors gave him the nickname of "Foulweather Jack;" by which the poet Byron, who was a grandson of the vice-admiral, alludes to him in a note to one of his poems.

      A Timely Rescue

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      A TIMELY RESCUE.

       One of the most singular escapes from drowning at sea perhaps ever recorded, is related in the letter of an officer of the eighty-third regiment, addressed to friends in Canada Borne years ago. While the division to which the writer belonged was on its way to Orient, being at that time a short distance eastward of the Cape of Good Hope, one of the men was ordered, for some trifling offence, to be severely flogged. Irritated to madness by the disgrace of the punishment, and by the cruelty with which it was administered, the poor fellow was no sooner released from the cords which had bound him than he ran to the bulwarks of the vessel, and, before the ship's crew and his soldier comrades, sprang overboard. The vessel was at the time making rapid way, with a high sea running, so that, as the man swept astern, all hope of saving him appeared to be at an end. Assistance, however, came from a quarter which the spectators could hardly have anticipated. While the crew were vainly endeavouring to lower the boat, which, ​as generally happens, was found to be no easy matter, a huge bird was seen in the distance to swoop down upon the struggling man. As the form of the man grew more indistinct in the distance, it seemed fluttering over him, as if puzzled by the unusual object. By the time the vessel had put about, and the boat, which had at length been lowered, was approaching, the bird was seen to be a huge albatross, which had descended upon the struggling soldier, doubtless to prey upon the body; but the man, in the agonies of his struggle, had instinctively seized the bird firmly, and retained his grasp in spite of the embarrassment of the creature, and its strenuous efforts to release itself. In this position his comrades found him, and finally restored him safely to the vessel. "Incredible as this story seems," says the original narrator, "the name and position of the writer of the letter, who was an eye-witness of the scene, sufficiently attests its truth."

      Adventures of Linnaeus in Lapland

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      THE ADVENTURES OF LINNÆUS IN LAPLAND.

       The celebrated naturalist, Linnæus, was appointed by the Swedish Royal Academy of Sciences to travel through Lapland, for the purpose of investigating the natural history of that country; and in his journal of this mission he has left us a curious and interesting record of the hardships which he willingly encountered in a journey alone through what was then an almost unknown country. It was on a morning in May, ​that he set out from the town of Upsal, attired, as he tells us, in a light coat of linsey-wolsey cloth, without folds, lined with red shalloon, leather breeches, a green leather cap, and a pair of half-boots. "I carried," he adds, "a small leather bag, half an ell in length, but somewhat less in breadth, furnished on one side with hooks and eyes, so that it could be opened and shut at pleasure. This bag contained one shirt, two pair of false sleeves, two half-shirts, an inkstand and pencase, microscope and telescope, a gauze cap to protect me occasionally from the gnats, a comb, my journal, and a parcel of paper stitched together for drying plants, both in folio, my manuscript ornithology, etc. I wore a hanger at my side, and carried a small fowling-piece, as well as an octangular stick, graduated for the purpose of measurement. Such was the simple equipment of the enthusiastic naturalist for a solitary journey, which amounted to three thousand seven hundred and ninety-eight English miles, through the wildest and most inhospitable region of Europe.

      The facts which Linnæus records in his journey chiefly relate to the plants, the animals, and the physical characteristics of the country he passed through; but it contains also numerous pictures of his own sufferings in pursuit of his favourite science. At Geflo he visited the last apothecary's shop and the last physician's in the country, no other being to be met with in any place farther north. Sometimes he passed through a desolate region, where all signs of vegetation were wanting; at others along a forlorn and wild sea-coast, where some remains of wrecked vessels added to the dismal character of the scene. On one occasion, he came to the hut of a ​Laplander and his wife, whom he describes as "of very diminutive stature, her eyes dark and sparkling, her eyebrows black, her pitchy-coloured hair hanging loose about her head, on which she wore a flat cap." She had a grey petticoat, her neck and bust, which resembled the skin of a frog, were adorned with brass rings; round her waist she wore a girdle, and on her feet a pair of half-boots. This woman, who spoke with the energy of a fury, nevertheless showed some compassion for the stranger's miserable plight, and addressed him with the words, "O wretched man, what hard fate can have brought you here, to a place never visited by any one before? Miserable creature, how did you come, and whither will you go? Do you not see what habitations we have, and with what difficulty we go to church?"

      "My health and strength," he adds, "being by this time materially impaired by wading through such an extent of marshes, laden with my apparel and luggage, for the Laplander had enough to do to carry the boat; by walking for whole nights together; by not having for a long time tasted any boiled meat; by drinking a great quantity of water, as nothing else was to be had; and by eating nothing but fish, unsalted, and crawling with vermin, I must have perished but for a piece of dried and salted reindeer's flesh, given me by my kind hostess the clergyman's wife at Lycksele. This food, however, without bread, proved unwholesome and indigestible. How I longed once more to meet with people who feed on spoon-meat! I inquired of this woman whether she could give me anything to eat. She replied, 'Nothing but fish.' I looked at the fresh fish, as it was called; but perceiving its mouth to be full of maggots, I had ​no appetite to touch it. But though it thus abated my hunger, it did not recruit my strength. I asked if I could have any reindeer tongues, which are commonly dried for sale, and served up even at