In walking across the chamber, he laughingly put his hand
on a six livre piece, and a louis d'or that lay on my table, and with a
half stifled blush, asked me how I was in the money way. Blushes
commonly beget blushes, and I blushed partly because he did, and partly
on other accounts. 'If fifteen guineas,' said he, interrupting the
answer he had demanded, 'will be of any service to you, there they are,'
and he put them on the table. 'I am a traveller myself, and though I
have some fortune to support my travels, yet I have been so situated as
to want money, which you ought not to do. You have my address in
London.' He then wished me a good morning and left me. This gentleman
was a total stranger to the situation of my finances, and one that I
had, by mere accident, met at an ordinary in Paris."
Ledyard observes, that he had no more idea of receiving money from this
gentleman than from Tippoo Saib. "However," he says, "I took it without
any hesitation, and told him, I would be as complaisant to him if ever
occasion offered."
His schemes for a north-west voyage, either for trade or discovery,
being now wholly abandoned, he set about planning, as the only remaining
expedient, a journey by land through the northern regions of Europe and
Asia, then to cross Behring's Straits to the continent of America, to
proceed down the coast to a more southern latitude, and to cross the
whole of that continent from the western to the eastern shore.
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