46 THE LIFE OF SIR JOSEPH BANKS 



Honour. But. A good opportunity will soon offer I hope. 

 Depend upon it, Sir, I shall Take special care of Sending 

 the above mention'd articles. When in order and an 

 opportunity serves. 



" Interim I remain your very Hble. Servt." 



The yachting excursion above mentioned was not the 

 only one taken this summer. Banks formed one of a 

 party to a jaunt in Yorkshire among the Cleveland hills ; 

 the story of which is narrated by that fine anecdotist 

 George Colman the younger. The travellers were 

 Captain Phipps ; his youngest brother Augustus, a boy 

 of Colman's own age (i.e. about thirteen) ; the elder 

 Mr. Colman and his son ; Mr. Banks, and Omai, of the 

 Friendly Isles. The three seniors were intimate friends. 



They started from York in Banks's carriage, " as huge 

 and heavy as a broad- wheeled wagon," though but just 

 large enough to contain the six passengers and their 

 abundant luggage. The books of Captain Phipps, who 

 was afterwards to make a stay at Mulgrave, and his 

 boxes and cases crammed with nautical lore ; maps, 

 charts, quadrants, telescopes, were put in, like stores 

 for a long voyage. Banks's stowage was still more for- 

 midable. He travelled with trunks containing volumin- 

 ous specimens of his hortus siccus in whity-brown paper, 

 and large receptacles for further accumulation of vegetable 

 materials. The vehicle had other characteristic encum- 

 brances. One of these 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 : 

 which snapped short, however, in our very first descent, 

 whereby the carriage ran over the post-boy who drove 

 the wheelers, and the chain of safety nearly crushed him 

 to death." There was, besides, a " hippopedometer," 

 by which a traveller might ascertain the precise rate 

 at which he was going, in the moment of his consulting it. 



