SIGISMUND BACSTROM, M.D. 97 



and he p"* my passage home to England, where I arrived after an 

 absence of 3 years and 8 months, on the 23 of July last. During 

 this long and tedious voyage I made as many sketches and 

 drawings as I could in hopes of reaping some benefit from them 

 at my return, which was very uncertain. If you will permit me, 

 Sir Joseph, to have the honour to shew them to you, I shall be 

 very happy ; I propose to copy my sketches in more finished 

 style. 



" During this unfortunate voyage, to drive away melancholy 

 thoughts and keep myself as chearful as times and circumstances 

 w*^ permit when I had no opportunity to collect plants or to 

 draw, I passed time aw^ay in uniting my thoughts into a kind of 

 system, what I had learned and studied since many years and 

 w'hat I believe to be true and rational. 



" These ideas were the basis of a treatise I put into some kind 

 of order since my return finished and improved my frontispiece 

 drawing, which I first conceived and invented at sea on board of 

 the American snow Amelia. 



" I wish to publish this treatise by Subscription in hopes to 

 earn a little money with it. Since 8 years I have applied myself 

 to the study of the Hebrew for the sake of comprehending the 

 curious scientific allegories in the Old Testament. Although the 

 general contents of my treatise do not concern your favourite 

 studies, yet on the other hand I am so well convinced by un- 

 merited favours of your goodness towards me that I humbly 

 presume to send you here inclosed 4 proposals, intreating you to 

 honour me with y' name as a subscriber and to procure me a 



few subscribers among your friends If you like. Sir, to 



see and read the manuscript first before you subscribe you will do 

 me much honour. It may not in every line coincide with your 

 ideas, but I am well persuaded that you will find in it nothing in 

 it that is against God, against morality, against Nature, against 

 Government, nor against common sense, nor will you find any 

 contradiction therein." 



There is no further reference to Bacstrom in the Banksian 

 correspondence, but we get one more glimpse of him in 1799, in 

 which year he published in the Philosophical Magazine for July 

 a detailed " Account of a [Whaling] Voyage to Spitzbergen in the 

 year 1780," "extracted from a journal which [he] kept at the 

 time." This is reprinted in the first volume of Pinkerton's 

 Collection of Voyages and Travels (1808), where it occupies seven 

 pages (614-620). From this narrative of the second of his 

 voyages we learn that at the time of writing Bacstrom had been 

 " no less than fifteen," from which it is apparent that he con- 

 tinued this mode of livelihood after his unfortunate voyage round 

 the world. It is from the lieading of this paper, which is written 

 in an interesting and lively style, that we learn that Bacstrom 

 had taken the degree of M.D. The vessel, the Rising Sun, left 

 London at the latter end of March and aiTived home about the 

 latter end of August. 



