DEATH OF CAPTAIN TUCKEY. 549 
medicine or nutriment, except cold water. He 
grew continually worse, became delirious on the 
^Ist, and died on the following day. 
Of all the leading members of the expedition. 
Captain Tuckey was now sole survivor ; and the 
same fate which had swallowed up them, was about 
to close upon him. He never was affected with 
fever, but was oppressed merely with debility, 
arising from fatigue, from the recurrence of a 
hepatic complaint, and from deep anguish of mind 
at the accumulated disasters of the expedition. 
Repeated expressions in his journal prove his sen- 
sibility to the accounts which came up the river, 
and to the state in which he found affairs on his 
arrival. He appears soon after to have fallen into 
a state of total depression, both of mind and body, 
and to have expressed a conviction, that his frame 
would never again recover any portion of energy. 
This debihty became always greater, till the lamp 
of life went out as it were from pure exhaustion. 
*' In him,^' says Mr Fitzmaurice, ** the navy lost 
an ornament, and its seamen a father." 
Our painful task is not yet closed : We have 
still to record the fate of another expedition, 
seemingly of equal promise, which, following the 
footsteps of Park, was destined to descend the 
Niger, and explore its termination. Major Peddie, 
under whose command it was placed^ arrived at 
