1830.] George Caiman's Random Records. 313 



fleet, and the engagement began. The transport by some accident was 

 set on fire ; it blew up, and he was flung into the sea. Unable to swim, 

 and expecting to sink immediately, -an English vessel threw out a rope 

 to him with a noose in it : in his hurry to fix it under his arms, it 

 slipped round his neck ; and when a friendly sailor tugged at him to 

 haul him on board, the endeavour to save his life almost put an end to 

 it. He was dragged upon deck, half singed, half drowned, and half 

 strangled. The triple escape may be considered as quadruple ; for he 

 ran the immediate risk of being shot in the action !" 



The elder Colman had promised to pay a visit to Lord Mulgrave at 

 his seat near Whitby ; and from York they set out with Captain Phipps, 

 the captain's brother Augustus, Sir Joseph Bankes, and Qmai, the Ota- 

 heitan, all in one coach ; no bad imitation of the stowage of the Wrong- 

 head family in the journey to London. The coach was the ponderous 

 property of Sir Joseph, and it was as " huge and heavy as a broad- wheel 

 waggon. It carried six inside passengers, with somewhat more than 

 their average luggage ; for the packages of Captain Phipps were laid in 

 like stores for a long voyage ; he had boxes and cases crammed with 

 nautical lore, books, maps, charts, quadrants, &c. Sir Joseph's stowage 

 was still more formidable unwearied in botanical research, he travelled 

 with trunks containing voluminous specimens of the hortus siccus, in 

 whity-brown paper, and large receptacles for further vegetable mate- 

 rials, which he might accumulate in his locomotions. The vehicle had, 

 also, in addition to its contingent loads, several fixed appurtenances with 

 which it was encumbered by its philosophical owner in particular, 

 there was a remarkably heavy safety -chain (a drag- chain upon a newly- 

 constructed principle), to obviate the possibility of danger in going down 

 a hill ; it snapped, however, in our very first descent. It blasted, also, 

 an internal piece of machinery with a hard name a hippopedometer, 

 by which a traveller might ascertain the rate at which he was going. 

 This also broke in the first ten miles of our journey, whereat the phi- 

 losopher, to whom it belonged, was the only person who lost his phi- 

 losophy/' 



We are afraid that botany is not the most sublime of the sciences, 

 and that Sir Joseph, if not a little of a quack, was a very bustling 

 and boring gentleman in his chace of flies and his plucking of roses. 

 They were tormented by his indefatigable botany. " We never saw a 

 tree with an unusual branch, or a strange weed, but a halt was imme- 

 diately ordered, and out jumped Sir Joseph, out jumped the two boys, 

 Augustus and myself, and out jumped Omai after us all. Many articles 

 which seemed to me no better than thistles, and which would not have 

 sold for a farthing in Covent Garden Market, were plucked up by the 

 roots, and stowed carefully in the coach as rarities." 



It is to be presumed, that a hedge-row in Yorkshire did not contain 

 many extraordinary discoveries in the botanical world even in Sir Joseph's 

 day, and that the gathering of horsermushrooms and thistles was as 

 much intended for the fame of Sir Joseph's love of science, as for the 

 benefit of mankind. But the finest display of zeal for science was to 

 come. " Among all our jumpings, the most amusing to me was, the 

 jump of a frog down Sir Joseph's throat ; having picked it up from the 

 grass, he held it in the palm of his hand till it performed this guttural 

 somerset, to convince his three followers, the two boys and the savage, 

 that there is nothing poisonous in the animal, as some ignorant people 

 M. M. Nen SerieZVoi. IX. No. 51. 2 S 



