INTRODUCTION. xlvii 



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 Kingston 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. I le 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 ihe 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 Avhich 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 



