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