CHAPTER FIRST.
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, Veyssiere, 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.
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