Misfortune, however, which attended Hollar in youth, seemed relentless throughout his entire career; after the restoration of Charles II., he underwent the terrible experiences of the plague and of the fire of London, and the times, hostile to every pursuit of art, reduced Hollar to a state of indigence and distress from which, in spite of persevering industry, he seems never to have been able to recover. Sent to Africa in 1669 as the king's designer, to make drawings of the fortifications and surroundings of the town of Tangiers, he meets with Algerine corsairs on his way back, from which he escapes with difficulty. On his return, it is only after delay and vexation that he can obtain £100 from the impecunious king for his two years' labours and expenses. He travels through England, making drawings and etchings of abbeys, churches, ruins, and cathedrals, and ultimately dies at Westminster (1677) in a state of extreme poverty and distress, his very death-bed being disturbed by bailiffs, who threaten the seizure of the last article of furniture he possessed, the bed upon which he is lying. His body was laid in the churchyard of St. Margaret's, Westminster; his name and works remain living and immortal. Hollar's prints amount to considerably over two thousand, and embrace all kinds of subjects, portraits, landscapes, architecture, costume, and animal and still-life of varied character and quality. His treatment of the textures of hair, feathers, or the bloom on butterflies and other insects, is simply unrivalled. Besides his portraits, among other well-known and valued prints, there are--after his own designs--the long bird's-eye view of London in four parts, plans of the same city before and after the great fire (1666), exterior and interior views of the old Cathedral of St. Paul,[51] Westminster Hall, with its picturesque surroundings, the Cathedrals of Lincoln, Southwell, Strasbourg, Antwerp, and York, sets of butterflies, insects, costumes, muffs, and richly-wrought jewelled vessels. In addition to these, he engraved a set of thirteen plates (1671) on the various English ways of hunting, hawking, and fishing, after Francis Barlow, painter and engraver, who flourished during the same period, and excelled in the representation of animals, birds, and fish. The latter artist has left a curious print--of which the only known example is supposed to be that of the British Museum--entitled "The Last Horse Race" (August 24, 1684), run before Charles II., at Dorsett Ferry (? Datchett), near Windsor Castle. Hollar was the master of Robert Gaywood, who in some measure imitates his style, and many of whose plates are justly esteemed, such as the series of heads after Van Dyck, the curious likeness of Cromwell, the large print of the philosophers Democritus and Heraclitus, as opposing professors of gaiety and gravity, and the plates of birds and animals after Barlow.