Enterprise and Adventure. Ralph Temple

very small and white-bottomed, I had for some time taken for a fowl with a white breast, and finally I was taken off the barge by Captain Johnstone, after being ten hours on the water. I found myself at the village of La Chine, twenty-one miles below where the accident happened, having been driven by the winding of the current a much greater distance. I received no other injury than bruised knees and breast, with a slight cold. The accident took some hold of my imagination, and for seven or eight succeeding nights, in my dreams, I was engaged in the dangers of the Cascades, and surrounded by drowning men. My escape was owing to a concurrence of fortunate circumstances. I happened to catch hold of various articles of support, and to exchange each article for another just at the right time. Nothing but the boom could have carried me down the Cascades without injury, and nothing but the barge could have saved me below them. I was also fortunate in having the whole day; had the accident happened one hour later, I should have arrived opposite the village of La Chine after dark, and, of course, would have been destroyed in the rapids below, to which I was swiftly advancing. The trunk, which furnished me with provisions and a resting-place above the water, I have every reason to think was necessary to save my life. Without it, I must have passed the whole time in the water, and have been exhausted with cold and hunger. When the people on shore saw our boat take the wrong channel, they predicted our destruction; the floating luggage, by supporting us for a time, enabled them to make an ​exertion to save us; but as it was not supposed possible to survive the passage of the Cascades, no further exertions were thought of, nor indeed could they well have been made," Of the eight men who passed down the Cascades, none escaped or were seen again but the writer, who some time afterwards published his singular narrative in a Liverpool newspaper, by the editor of which it was vouched for as true in every particular.

      It was at this place that General Amherst's brigade, coming to attack Canada, were lost in September, 1760, the French at Montreal receiving the first intelligence of the invasion by the dead bodies floating past the town. It was said that the pilot who conducted their boats, being secretly favourable to the French, had committed the same error as the captain of the barge in the above narrative. He had intentionally taken the wrong channel, and the other boats, following mechanically and close upon him, were all involved in the same destruction. No less than forty-six barges, seventeen whale-boats, one row-galley with eighty men, besides artillery, stores, and ammunition, were then swept down these terrible rapids, and entirely lost.

      Captain Cochrane, the Pedestrian Traveller

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      CAPTAIN COCHRANE, THE PEDESTRIAN TRAVELLER.

      The

      passion for adventure in foreign lands appears to be natural to human beings; but probably no one ever possessed this passion more strongly than the late

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      CAPTAIN COCHRANE AND THE ROBBERS.

      ​ ​Captain Dundas Cochrane, whose narrative of a pedestrian journey through Russia and Siberian Tartary, from the frontiers of Tartary to the Frozen Sea and Kamtschatka, was published about forty years since. In the introduction to this extraordinary book, Captain Cochrane tells us that, in the month of January, 1820, he addressed a letter to the Lords of the Admiralty, offering to undertake a journey on foot into the interior of Africa, or to any other place to which they pleased to send him. He was entirely without funds for the purpose, his whole fortune consisting of his half-pay as a commander in the Navy; but his intention was to proceed alone, and he asked only to be furnished with the countenance of the Government. "With this protection," he says, "and such recommendations as it might procure me, I would have accompanied the caravans in some servile capacity, nor hesitated even to sell myself as a slave if that miserable alternative were necessary to accomplish the object I had in view." His opinion upon the advantages of this mode of exploring were peculiar, but were not without some plausibility. "In going alone," he said, "I relied upon my own individual exertions and knowledge of man, unfettered by the frailties and misconduct of others. I was then, as now, convinced that many people travelling together for the purpose of exploring a barbarous country, have the less chance of succeeding; more especially when they go armed, and take with them presents of value. The appearance of numbers must naturally excite the natives to resistance, from motives of jealousy or fear; and the danger would be greatly increased by the hope of plunder. The death of the whole party, and ​consequently the failure of the expedition, will be the probable result of such a plan. The difficulty of finding men, otherwise suitable, whose constitutions admit an equal degree of suffering and fatigue, is also great; and that of collecting a number of people gifted with the due portion of those virtues without which no expedition of discovery could succeed, is certainly a greater."

      It is not, perhaps, surprising that the Admiralty shrank from the responsibility of advising a young officer without fortune to start upon a pedestrian expedition of such magnitude; but Cochrane was not easily discouraged. Despairing of obtaining employment afloat, he determined to start on his explorations without any assistance. Having procured two years' leave of absence, he accordingly sketched out a magnificent scheme, which was no other than to travel on foot round the globe as nearly as could be done by land, crossing from Northern Asia to America at Behring's Straits. He had but little qualification for a scientific traveller; he was ignorant of natural history, nor could he travelling on foot have brought away with him any specimens of animals, plants, or minerals. Moreover, he had no means of carrying with him the instruments necessary for making geographical observations of places, of the state of the air, or such other matters as are generally expected to be noted by travellers; but his inextinguishable thirst for travel overcame all these objections. His first and leading object was to trace the shores of the Polar Sea along America by land, as Captain Parry was then attempting to do by sea, and at the same time to note his observations on men and manners. Having, therefore, procured such documents ​as were necessary, and filled his knapsack with the few articles which he considered requisite to enable him to wander alone through the wild deserts and forests of three quarters of the globe, he quitted England, and landed, in February, 1820, at Dieppe, in France, from which point his long pedestrian journey commenced. Having traversed in this way the whole of France by way of Paris, sleeping chiefly in humble lodging-houses, where bed and breakfast were furnished for a franc, he entered Rhenish Prussia by way of Metz and Sarrebruck. The country people, and particularly the roadside innkeepers, eyed him with suspicion. The landlord of one house at which he had stopped at Alzey turned him out, because he was only a foot-traveller; but the indomitable pedestrian, thinking it better to pocket the affront, purchased a loaf of bread, and pushed on, fatigued, cold, and mortified, but not downcast, until he reached a farm, whose adjoining barn furnished him with a night's shelter. Here he reposed with perfect content upon clean hay. On another occasion, at Naumberg, he could gain no reception into any house but that of a poor shoemaker, which he did at the price of a glass of schnaps; who besides, for a second glass, mended his shoes and gaiters, and provided him with a truss of straw, on which he slept soundly. At Potsdam he obtained admittance to a house with infinite difficulty, content to purchase black bread for his supper, and the use of a hard bench for his bed. In Berlin he perambulated the streets nearly the whole night in search of a lodging, and was at last compelled to sleep on a seat in the Promenade under the open sky. Here, however, he fared better for awhile. By the kind ​assistance of Mr. Rose, the British minister, he obtained a comfortable lodging, and his benefactor invited him to a dinner at his house, at which Captain Cochrane made the acquaintance of Prince Labanoff and other powerful persons, by whose interest he was enabled greatly to facilitate his journey to St. Petersburg. We find a curious contrast to the rapid transmission of intelligence in the present day, when we learn that Cochrane, though a pedestrian, was the first bearer of the information of the Duke de Berri's assassination in Paris, a full month's post being due at Berlin, owing to the great quantity of snow which had fallen.

      Continuing his journey towards Stettin, the traveller suffered cruelly from the cold and the bad roads. An old soldier of Napoleon whom he had met on