INTRODUCTION. xl vii 
travelling, and the toil of baptizing the people, and the whole 
were recovered in the course of four months, by having 
almost all their blood drawn out of their bodies, and fre- 
quent purgatives administered to them, similar, in their 
violent effects, to those which in Europe are given to 
horses ; however it is possible that the fever contracted by 
these pious men may have been of a very different type 
from that which attacked the expedition up the Zaire. 
As a close to this melancholy recital, the editor hopes 
he may stand excused in putting on record a few brief 
sketches, which he has been able to collect, of the profes- 
sional and literary history of those valuable men, who may 
be said to have fallen the victims of a too ardent zeal in the 
pursuit of science, which, how much soever we may lament, 
leaves nothing for us to censure. 
James Kincston Tuckey was the youngest son of Tho- 
mas Tuckey, Esq. of Greenhill, near Mallow, in the county 
of Cork, by Elizabeth, daughter of the Rev. James Kings- 
ton, rector of Donoughmore, and sister of the present vicar- 
general of the diocese of Cloyne. Ile was born in August 
1776; and his parents dying during his infancy, he was 
left under the care of his maternal grandmother, who 
placed him in the first grammar school in Cork; here he 
soon distinguished himself by an ardent and inquisitive 
mind, and was making considerable progress in his stu- 
dies, when his inclination took a turn for the sea service, 
from which it could not be diverted. His thirst after know- 
ledge was ardent, but his mind was romantic in the ex- 
treme. With an eagerness natural to youth, he panted 
after a life of adventure : and the course of his voluntary 
