Now came difficulties and explanations, and John cut the knot by going to
sea. Four years later, at the end of a voyage, a young American seaman
walks the narrow streets of London’s “Sailortown.” John Ledyard is now
twenty-five years old, life has done little with him, and he has done
little with life; his friends at home are beginning to regard him as
something of a ne’er-do-well, and the pockets of his sailor breeches are
emptier than ever.
In “Sailortown” an April sun is shining, the dank smell of the Thames
mingles with wood smoke from the hearths, and there is a sound of men’s
voices and a clink of glasses at the doors of mariner’s inns. John steps
into a tavern, and hears news which fires his imagination, and sets his
blood to racing. Captain James Cook, the great navigator and explorer,
is about to make a third voyage to the South Seas, and ships are being
prepared and loaded for the expedition. With characteristic audacity,
John hurries directly to the Captain at his lodgings in Chelsea Hospital,
and boldly requests to be allowed to go. His colonial directness pleases,
and John Ledyard walks back to London, no longer an obscure American
seaman, but a corporal of His Majesty’s Marines attached to Cook’s own
vessel, the _Discovery_.
The two ships of the expedition, the old _Resolution_ and the new
_Discovery_, sailed from England on July 12th, 1776, bound for the South
Pacific by the Cape of Good Hope.
He was a marine, now, on a British naval vessel; a roving Yankee caught
up in the old navy’s conventionalised routine. A bugle or a drum tattoo
woke him at early dawn as he slept in the low ’tween deck caves where the
timbers groaned when the wind freshened in the night, and the lanterns
and the hammocks swung to the listing of the ship; he escaped from the
darkness below, the warm, human smell, and the sight of sleepy men and
nakedness to the humid deck, the lilac morning, and the vast splendour of
the awakening sea; the drill drum beat for him, he heard the shuffle and
the tramp of feet, the peremptory order, and, in the silences, the wind
in the rigging and the endless, dissolving whisper of alongside foam.
This _Discovery_ was the more interesting of the ships. Captain Cook
himself was aboard, a man over six feet in height, with brown eyes, a
pleasant countenance, and brown hair tied behind. Ledyard often saw the
tall figure in great cloak and three-cornered hat standing at the other
end of the deck. Perhaps of even greater interest to the ship’s company
was the Noah’s ark farmyard aboard of cattle, sheep, goats, ducks, dogs,
horses, cats, pigs, and rabbits, all intended as gifts to estimable
savages who had no such allies, for the eighteenth century was nothing if
not benevolent. When in port for any length of time, the sea-going bull
and the other grazing animals were put ashore for pasturage; at the Cape
of Good Hope, a rascally Hottentot delayed the expedition by stealing
a salty and intrepid cow. During a stay in the east, this animal world
was strengthened by a vast contingent of cockroaches who fell in showers
to the deck when the sails were unfurled before getting under way; not
a romantic picture, this, but one with a genuine flavor of old sailing
ship days. And when all other things wearied, there was a battle to
watch, that battle with never a truce which is the sailing of a sailing
ship in open sea.
After a pause by the barren rocks of Kerguelen Land in the Antarctic, and
after revisiting Tasmania and New Zealand, the expedition sounded its way
through the archipelagos of the South Pacific, and anchored in the bay of
Tongataboo in the Friendly Islands. The ships remained there twenty-six
days gathering stores.
Tongataboo—the name has a ring of the Bab Ballads; but it hides the
memory of a Paradise. John found himself among a people who were
beautiful, courteous, and friendly, for no whites had yet poisoned them
either with their maladies or their civilization, and there was no
tiresome angel with a flaming sword. First of a line of roaring Yankee
whalemen and sailors, Corporal John walks the island night under the
giant moon, watching the smooth, incoming seas burst and scatter into
a churning wash that might be a liquid and greener moonlight; first of
American adventurers in the South Seas, John Ledyard hears the endless
clatter and dry rustling of the island palms. He lives in a tent ashore,
refers to the natives as “the Indians,” eats fish baked in plantain
leaves, and drinks water from a coconut shell. Late in the golden night,
he hears over the faint monotone of the breaking sea, “a number of
flutes, beginning almost at the same time, burst from every quarter of
the surrounding grove.” Not to be outdone in the matter of entertainment,
Cook delights the innocent natives with a display of fireworks, a form
of entertainment then regarded as the height of the ingenious and the
civilized. Surely it was pleasant to be alive when Paradise was young.
From the Friendly Islands, the _Discovery_ carried John to Hawaii, and
thence to the coast whose memory was to shape the greater adventures of
his life.
By the last half of the eighteenth century, the one accessible coast of
North America which lingered unvisited and unexplored, was the coast
of the Pacific North Northwest,—or to be more definite, the shores
of northern British Columbia and the great peninsula of Alaska. The
geographers of the day were aware that Bering had sighted such a coast,
and that the Russians had crossed to it from northeastern Siberia and
claimed it for their empire, but with these two facts their knowledge
came to an end. The character and the conformation of the land remained
unknown. Cook was to be the first to make a scientific survey of the
region, for the Admiralty had instructed him to explore any rivers or
inlets that might lead eastward to Hudson’s or Baffin’s bay through the
“Northwest Passage” of romance. The ships turned north in December, 1777,
and arrived off the coast of what is now the state of Oregon on March
7th, 1778. The weather was cold and stormy, but summer came upon them
as they worked their way to the north, the splendid summer of the cool,
northwestern land.
John Ledyard was once more on American soil, and what an America it
was, this great unknown land of bold, indented coasts, evergreens and
alders, snow-capped inland mountains, and great rivers moving unsullied
to the sea! The beauty and living quality of the new country conquered
the Connecticut explorer even as it conquered those who followed him.
Carefully charting the way, Cook’s expedition sailed along the coast to
Alaska, past the towering cliffs of vast glaciers rising pale-green from
the darker surges washing at their base; into this great fjord and into
that went the ships, waking the deep arctic silence with the plunge
of their anchors and the hurrying rattle of chain. At the Island of
Unalaska, John offered to go with native guides in search of some “white
strangers,” and thus had a unique opportunity to spy out the land.
“I took with me some presents adapted to the taste of the Indians, brandy
in bottles, and bread, but no other provisions. I went entirely unarmed
by the advice of Captain Cook.... The country was rough and hilly; and
the weather wet and cold. At about three hours before dark we came to
a large bay, ... and saw a canoe approaching us from the opposite side
of the bay, in which were two Indians. It was beginning to be dark when
the canoe came to us. It was a skin canoe after the Esquimaux plan (a
kayak) with two holes to accommodate two sitters. The Indians that came
in the canoe talked a little with my two guides and desired I would get
into the canoe. This I did not very readily agree to, however, as there
was no other place for me but to be thrust into the space between the
holes, extended at length upon my back, and wholly excluded from seeing
the way I went, or the power of extricating myself on any emergency. But
as there was no alternative I submitted thus to be stowed away in bulk,
and went head foremost very swift through the water about an hour, when
I felt the canoe strike a beach, and afterwards lifted up and carried
some distance, and then sat down again, after which I was drawn up by the
shoulders by three or four men, for it was now so dark that I could not
tell who they were, though I was conscious that I heard a language that
was new.
“I was conducted by two of these persons, who appeared to be strangers,
about forty rods, when I saw lights and a number of huts.... As we
approached one of them, a door opened, and discovered a lamp by which, to
my joy and surprise, I discovered that the two men who held me by each
arm were Europeans, fair and comely, and concluded from their appearance
that they were Russians, which I soon after found to be true.... We had
supper which consisted of boiled whale, halibut fried in oil, and broiled
salmon.... I had a very comfortable bed composed of different fur skins,
both under and over me.... After I had lain down, the Russians assembled
the Indians in a very silent manner, and said prayers after the manner
of the Greek church which is much like the Roman.”
The meeting of the New England marine and certain Russian fur traders
visiting Alaska to buy skins for the Chinese trade, is not without
significance to the philosophic reader of history, for it is the first
contact of a white civilisation advancing across America from the east
with another and a belated white civilisation approaching the continent
from the west. Had Columbus failed, what strange results might not have
sprung from this Russian enterprise! But Yankee John rises to end the
reverie. A notion of advancing his fortune by joining in the Alaskan fur
trade is getting into his head, and he enters in his journal that skins
which were purchased in Alaska for six pence were sold later in China for
a hundred dollars.
Save for the tragic death of Captain Cook, who was attacked by natives at
Hawaii, and “fell into the water and spoke no more,” there is little in
the further history of the ships to halt the chronicle of Corporal John.
The ships revisited the Bering Sea and the Russian Asiatic coast, cruised
to China, and returned to England round the same Cape of Good Hope. The
expedition had been at sea exactly four years and three months.
For two troubled years, John Ledyard walks the flagstones of a British
barrack yard, for the war of the Revolution is being fought in America,
and he can neither escape nor bring himself to take naval service against
his countrymen. Barrack life, however, ends by exhausting his patience,
he seeks a transfer to the American station, and the December of 1782
finds him aboard a British man of war lying in Huntington Bay, Long
Island. As the island was then in the hands of the British, John obtains
seven days’ leave, but patriotically forgets to report aboard. From a
stay with friends at Huntington, he hastens to Southold, where his mother
keeps a boarding house, then frequented chiefly by British officers.
He rode up to the door, alighted, went in, and asked if he could be
accommodated in her house as a lodger. She replied that he could, and
showed him a room into which his baggage was conveyed. After having
adjusted his dress, he came out, and took a seat by the fire in company
with several other officers, without making himself known to his mother,
or entering into conversation with any person. She frequently passed and
repassed through the room, and her eye was observed to be attracted to
him with more than usual attention. At last after looking at him steadily
for some minutes, she deliberately put on her spectacles, approached
nearer to him, begging his pardon for her rudeness, and telling him that
he so much resembled a son of hers, who had been absent eight years,
that she could not resist her inclination to view him more closely. “The
scene that followed,” adds the old chronicler, “may be imagined, but not
described.”
Travelling by night down the Long Island shore, John found a way to reach
Hartford, and took refuge there at the house of his Uncle Seymour. He
remained with him four months, writing an account of his voyage with
Cook. The book was published, and is now exceedingly rare. “I am now at
Mr. Seymour’s,” wrote John, “and as happy as need be. I have a little
cash, two coats, three waistcoats, six pair stockings, and half a dozen
ruffled shirts.... I eat and drink when I am asked, and visit when
invited, in short, I generally do as I am bid. All I want of my friends
is friendship, possessed of that, I am happy.”
The long and cruel struggle of the American Revolution was drawing to
an end. Peace was at hand. John Ledyard, now thirty-two years of age,
found himself a personage in his own country. He was John Ledyard, “the
American traveller.” And he had lost his corporal’s chevrons—popular
imagination had seen to that; John was now Captain Ledyard; Major
Ledyard, and even Colonel Ledyard to the eloquent. The American
traveller! The great, fair-haired, “rangy” lad had grown into a tall
energetic man whose countenance told of hardship and adventure; there
were lines, such as sailors have, about his eyes, his nose was thinner
and more than ever eagle-like, and the grey eyes had a look in them
the world but rarely sees. The man stands at the window of the house
in Hartford, looking down the still, New England street, but the inner
eye sees only the northwest coast, the waterfalls on the sides of the
sea ravines, the dark trees, and the crests of snow. He alone, of all
the American world, has seen the unknown land; he alone can guide his
fellow-adventurers of the young republic to the wealth that waits the
gathering of the bold.