John Ledyard's Perilous Journeys

EVEN WHILE STILL A STUDENT, LEDYARD SHOWED a wanderlust unequalled by his peers. The global map above shows his approximate routes up to the moment he died. (1) After four months at Dartmouth he went AWOL with the St. Francis Indians near Canada. (2) The following year he made his famous canoe trip from Hanover to Hartford; his family was not pleased to see him. (3) Clearly unsuited for other professions, he shipped out as a common sailor to Gibraltar. (4) After working in the New England coastal trade he served on a merchant ship bound for Falmouth, England, where he was pressed into the British army. (5) Refusing to fight the American revolutionists, he sailed with Captain James Cook around the Cape of Good Hope to Australia, Tahiti, Hawaii, the northwest coast of America, the Arctic Ocean, China, and back to London. (6) He was shipped out to the American colonies the same month Cornwallis surrendered his army. ( ) In 1781 he left America for the last time, bound for England. (8) Attempting to reach the American West and explore the interior, he traveled across western Europe to Stockholm, walked in winter around the Gulf of Bothnia, then rode in postal coaches and boats from St. Petersburg across Siberia to Yakutsk, where the Empress Catherine had him arrested and carried to the Polish border. (9) Recruited to find the source of the Niger, he sailed to Cairo—where he overdosed an emetic and died at age 37.