He obtained, while out on his parole, the merchant ship _Margaret and Anne_, to carry provisions to Iceland, where the people were suffering extreme privation. On a second voyage the governor, Count Tramp, prohibited the intercourse: Jorgenson landed while the people were at church, and aided by his seamen took the governor prisoner. He then, with extraordinary impudence, issued a proclamation stating that he had been called by an oppressed people to assume the reins of government. He proceeded to reform its various departments: he lightened the taxes, augmented the pay of the clergy, improved the system of education, established trial by jury, formed an army consisting of eight soldiers, and fortified the harbour with six guns. Having performed these exploits, he returned to London in a prize taken from the island. His proceedings were already known to the ministry, and he was arrested as an alien at large. Jorgenson made no small stir by his appearance among legislators and conquerors. After a variety of adventures, in which he was often on the borders of crime, he pawned the linen taken from his lodging, and was sentenced to transportation. In Newgate he was employed as a dispenser of medicine. After four years detention he was released; but was retaken, having neglected to quit Great Britain, and transported for life. Such is the account he gave of his imprisonment. The penalty might have been commuted; but he undertook to write on various subjects, and created some trouble; he was therefore forwarded to this colony. Here he was chiefly employed as a constable; detected many crimes, and brought several to the scaffold. A woman, who had assisted him in discovering certain offenders, became his wife; and he was often seen fleeing from her fury through the streets. He, however, survived her, and at length closed his singular career in the colonial hospital. Jorgenson made great pretensions to literature. He wrote a treatise on religion, and another on the treaty of Tilsit: in this country he published a pamphlet on the funded system, and a narrative of his life by himself. With a knowledge of the writer, it is amusing to read the grave strictures of the London critics, who complained that he bounded with amazing rapidity from one subject to another, without leaving a trace of his track: now among the stars--then on a steam engine chasing infidelity--or pelting atheism with meteoric stones.[148] FOOTNOTES: