5.  Smith had many adventures, after his wound obliged him to leave Jamestown.  He visited this country again; made a voyage to the Summer Isles; fought with pirates; joined the French against the Spaniards; and was adrift, in a little boat, alone, on the stormy sea, during a night so tempestuous that thirteen French ships were wrecked, near the Isle of Re; yet he was saved.

6.  He died in London, in 1631, in the fifty-second year of his age, after having published his singular adventures in Europe, Asia, Africa, and America.

LESSON LIII.

John Ledyard.—­JUVENILE MISCELLANY.

1.  Few men have done so much, in a short life, as John Ledyard.  When he was a mere boy, he built a canoe with his own hands, and descended Connecticut river alone and unassisted.

2.  He enlisted as a soldier, at Gibraltar; and afterwards, in the humble character of corporal of the marines, he sailed round the world with the celebrated Captain Cook.

3.  After his return to England, he formed the bold design of traversing the northern parts of Europe and Asia, crossing Behring’s Straits, and examining the whole of North America, from east to west.

4.  Sir Joseph Banks, famous for his generosity to men of enterprise, furnished him with money for the undertaking.  He expended nearly all of it in purchasing sea stores; and these, most unluckily, were all seized by a custom-house officer, on account of some articles which the English law forbade to be exported.

5.  Poor Ledyard was now left in utter poverty; but he was a resolute man, and he would not be discouraged.  With only ten guineas in his purse, he attempted to walk over the greater part of three continents.

6.  He walked through Denmark and Sweden, and attempted to cross the great Gulf of Bothnia, on his way to Siberia; but when he reached the middle of that inland sea, he found the water was not frozen, and he was obliged to foot it back to Stockholm.

7.  He then traveled round the head of the gulf, and descended to St. Petersburg.  Here he was soon discovered to be a man of talents and activity; and though he was without money, and absolutely destitute of stockings and shoes, he was treated with great attention.

8.  The Portuguese ambassador invited him to dine, and was so much pleased with him, that he used his influence to obtain for him a free passage in the government wagons, then going to Irkutsk, in Siberia, at the command of the Empress Katharine.

9.  He went from this place to Yakutz, and there awaited the opening of the spring, full of the animating hope of soon completing his wearisome journey.  But misfortune seemed to follow him wherever he went.

10.  The empress could not believe that any man in his senses was traveling through the ice and snows of uncivilized Siberia, merely for the sake of seeing the country and the people.