LIFE OF THE AUTHOR. 



landed in Liverpool, I was unable to proceed to London with the 

 despatches ; so I sent them by the mail, and wrote a letter of apology 

 to Lord Bathurst. His Lordship returned a very kind answer, and 

 requested that I would repair to London when I had got better of 

 the tertian ague, as he wished me to explore Madagascar. When I 

 had rallied a little, I proceeded to London, and waited on him. 

 He told me that I should have to explore the interior of Madagascar ; 

 with permission to visit Monomotapa and the Sechelles Islands, 

 &c. ; and that a man-of-war would take me out early in October fol- 

 lowing. This was in the month of May 1813. The ague still annoy- 

 ing me cruelly, I wrote to Lord Bathurst, and begged to resign the 

 commission. Horace once condemned himself for running away, 

 Relicta non bene parmnlh. It was for me to have condemned my- 

 self too on this occasion for I never acted so much against my own 

 interest as when I declined to go to Madagascar. I ought to have 

 proceeded thither by all means, and to have let the tertian ague take 

 its chance. My commission was a star of the first magnitude. It ap- 

 peared after a long night of political darkness, which had prevented 

 the family from journeying onwards for the space of nearly three cen- 

 turies. I can fancy that it beckoned to me, and that a voice from it 

 said, ' Come and serve your country ; come and restore your family 

 name to the national calendar, from which it has been so long and so 

 unjustly withdrawn ; come and show to the world that conscience, 

 and not crime, has hitherto been the cause of your being kept in the 

 background ; come into the national dockyard, and refit your shat- 

 tered bark, which has been cast on a lee-shore, where merciless 

 wreck-seekers have plundered its stores, and where the patriots of 

 yesterday have looked down upon it with scorn 'and contempt, and 

 have pronounced it unworthy to bear its country's flag.' I ought 

 to have listened to this supposed adviser at the time: but I did not; 

 and the star went down below the horizon, to appear no more. 

 Few people, except those who have been to seek adventures in far 

 distant countries, are aware of the immense advantages of a Govern- 

 ment commission, especially when the traveller is in our own 

 colonies. With it, his way is clear, and his story is already told : 

 everybody acknowledges his consequence, and is eager to show him 

 attention. Without it, he is obliged to unfold his object in view at 



