This was undoubtedly the most severe blow he had yet received; but Ledyard never desponded—­no sooner was one of his castles demolished, than he set about building another.  “I shall make the tour of the globe,” he says, “from London eastward, on foot.”  To aid him in this object, a subscription was raised by Sir Joseph Banks, Sir James Hall, and some others.  By this means he arrived at Hamburgh; whence he writes to colonel Smith:—­“Here I am with ten guineas exactly, and in perfect health.  One of my dogs is no more:  I lost him in my passage up the river Elbe, in a snow storm:  I was out in it forty hours in an open boat.”

At the tavern he went to, he learnt that a Major Langhorn, an American officer, “a very good kind of a man,” as his host described him, “and an odd kind of a man, one who had travelled much, and fond of travelling in his own way,” had left his baggage behind, which was sent after him to Copenhagen, but that, by some accident, it had never reached him.  He had left Hamburgh, the host told him, with one spare shirt, and very few other articles of clothing, and added, that he must necessarily be in distress.  This man, thought Ledyard to himself, is just suited to be the companion of my travels.  The sympathy was irresistible; besides, he might be in want of money; this was an appeal to his generosity, which was equally irresistible to one who, like Ledyard, had ten guineas in his pocket.  “I will fly to him and lay my little all at his feet:  he is my countryman, a gentleman, and a traveller, and Copenhagen is not much out of my way to Petersburgh,” and, accordingly, in the month of January, 1787, after a long and tedious journey, in the middle of winter, through Sweden and Finland, we find him in Copenhagen, having discovered Langhorn shut up in his room, without being able to stir abroad for want of money and decent clothing.  After remaining a fortnight, he made a proposal to the Major to accompany him to St. Petersburgh.  “No:  I esteem you, but no man on earth shall travel with me the way I do,” was the abrupt refusal to the man who had gone out of the way several hundred miles to relieve his wants, and given him his last shilling.

The visit being ended, and the amicable partnership dissolved, it became necessary for our traveller to think of raising the supplies for a journey round the Gulf of Bothnia, which was now rendered impassable, the distance being not less than twelve hundred miles, chiefly over trackless snows, in regions thinly peopled, the nights long, and the cold intense; and, after all, gaining only, in the direct route, about fifty miles.  A Mr. Thompson accepted his bill on Colonel Smith, for a sum which, he says, “has saved me from perdition, and will enable me to reach Petersburgh.”  This journey he accomplished within seven weeks; but he writes to Mr. Jefferson, “I cannot tell you by what means I came, and hardly know by what means I shall quit it.”  Through the influence of Professor Pallas, but more especially by the assistance of a Russian officer, he obtained the passport of the empress, then on her route to the Crimea, in fifteen days.  His long and dreary journey having exhausted his money, and worn out his clothes, he drew on Sir Joseph Banks for twenty guineas, which that munificent patron of science and enterprise did not hesitate to pay.