On arriving at Stockholm, Ledyard found that the Gulf of Bothnia was neither sufficiently frozen to enable him to cross it upon the ice, nor yet free enough from ice to be navigable. Under these circumstances he formed the daring resolution of travelling round the gulf, a distance of twelve hundred miles, “over trackless snows, in regions thinly peopled, where the nights are long, and the cold intense,—and all this to gain no more than fifty miles.” Accordingly, he set out for Tornea, in the depth of winter, on foot, with little money in his pocket, and no friends to whom he could apply when his small stock should be exhausted. Of this part of his travels no account remains. Other travellers who have visited Tornea in winter, under the most favourable circumstances, describe in tremendous colours the horrors of the place. “The place,” says Maupertuis, “on our arrival on the 30th of December, had really a most frightful aspect. Its little houses were buried to the tops in snow, which, if there had been any daylight, must have effectually shut it out. But the snow continually falling, or ready to fall, for the most part hid the sun the few moments that he might have showed himself at midday. In the month of January the cold was increased to the extremity, that Reaumur’s mercurial thermometers, which in Paris, in the great frost of 1709, it was thought strange to see fall to fourteen degrees below the freezing point, were now down to thirty-seven. The spirit of wine in the others was frozen. If we opened the door of a warm room, the external air instantly converted all the air in it into snow, whirling it round in white vortices. If we went abroad, we felt as if the air were tearing our breasts to pieces.” Such was the country through which Ledyard made his way to Petersburg, which he reached on the 20th of March, that is, within seven weeks from his leaving Stockholm, making the distance travelled over about two hundred miles per week upon an average. Here he was well received by Professor Pallas and other scientific men; and through the interest of Count Segur, the French ambassador, obtained the empress’s permission to traverse her vast dominions. As he was compelled to wait several months, however, for this indispensable document, and was destitute on his arrival at Petersburg of money, and almost of clothes, he drew a bill of twenty guineas on Sir Joseph Banks, which he was fortunate enough to get some one to discount. This enabled him to await the leisure of Catharine, who was too deeply plunged in her schemes of debauchery and ambition to afford a thought on a poor houseless wanderer like Ledyard. But at length the passport was granted; and a Dr. Brown happening at that moment to be proceeding with a quantity of stores to Yakutsk for the use of Mr. Billings, who was then employed by the empress in exploring the remoter parts of Siberia and Kamtschatka, our traveller obtained permission to accompany him.