When I arrived at the Lazaretto at Marseilles, the Farenteit, as it is called in Nubia, or the Guinea-worm, the name it bears in Europe, having been broken by mismanagement in my voyage from Alexandria, had retired into my leg and festered there. The foot, leg, and thigh, swelled to a monstrous size, appearance of mortification followed, and the surgeon, with a tenderness and humanity that did honour to his skill, declared, though reluctantly, that if I had been a man of weak nerves, or soft disposition, he would have prepared me for what was to happen by the interposition of a friend or a priest; but as from my past sufferings he presumed my spirit was of a more resolute and firmer kind, he thought saving time was of the utmost consequence, and therefore advised me to resolve upon submitting to an immediate amputation above the knee. To limp through the remains of life, after having escaped so many dangers with bones unbroken, was hard, so much so, that the loss of life itself seemed the most eligible of the two, for the bad habit of body in which I found myself in an inveterate disease, for which I knew no remedy, and joined to this the prejudice that an Englishman generally has against foreign operators in surgery, all persuaded me, that, after undergoing amputation, I had but very little chance of recovery, besides long and great suffering, want of sleep, want of food, and the weakness that attends lying long in sick-bed, had gradually subdued the natural desire and anxiety after life; every day death seemed to be a lesser evil than pain. Patience, however, strong fomentations, and inward applications of the bark, at length cured me. It was immediately after receiving my melancholy sentence, that, thinking of my remaining duties, I remembered I had carried abroad with me an order from the king to procure seeds for his garden. Before I had lost the power of direction, I ordered Michael, my Greek servant, to take the half of all the different parcels and packages that were lying by me, made up for separate uses, and pack them so as they might be sent to Sir William Duncan the king’s physician, then in Italy, to be conveyed by him to Lord Rochfort, secretary of state. I by the same conveyance accompanied these with a short letter, wrote with great difficulty,--that it appearing, beyond leaving room for hope, that my return was to be prevented by an unexpected disease, I begged his Majesty to receive these as the last tender of my duty to him.