600 Smith : Biographical Sketch of 



After short stays in New York and Philadelphia, they made their 

 home in Cincinnati. In 1849 in company with about fifty young 



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Fort Laramie all superfluous baggage was left behind, and at Fort 

 Hall on the upper waters of Lewis Fork of Snake River, the wagons 

 were abandoned and their contents transferred to pack mules, and 

 as the number of mules was limited, many of the party had to 

 make the rest of the journey on foot. 



Young Mohr thus lost all his books and a herbarium already 

 well filled. The travellers arrived finally at a settlement in the 

 Sacramento Valley, no days after leaving the last settlement on 

 the border of Missouri. A year spent in gold mining with the 

 unavoidable exposure to extremes of climate so told upon the 

 health of young Mohr, as to compel him to give up his interests 

 in the claim and return east, which he did by way of Panama. 

 Stopping there for the' purpose of regaining his strength, he had 

 the misfortune to lose by theft all his belongings including his her- 

 barium and a collection of minerals, and to fall a victim to fever, 

 on partial recovery from which he took passage for New Orleans 

 and arrived in Cincinnati towards the end of December, 1850. 



The next two years were spent upon a farm in Indiana which 

 he and his brother had purchased jointly, and it was during this 

 time, 1852, that he was married. The rheumatic troubles con- 

 tracted in California finally making the life of a farmer impossible 

 to him, he went to Louisville where he became interested in the 

 drug business, for which he had always a strong inclination. His 

 long -interrupted botanical studies were renewed mainly through 

 the acquaintance here made with Leo Lesquereux, at that time en- 

 gaged in the study of the mosses. But the climate of Louisville 

 did not agree with him and an attack of neuralgia which affected 

 the heart and kept him confined to his bed for a long time, led 

 him to seek a more genial one first in Louisiana and then in Vera 

 Cruz, and finally in the highlands of Mexico between Cordova 

 and Orizaba. 



During his sojourn in Mexico he met with many congenial 

 friends both among Germans and Mexicans, and he would prob- 

 ably have cast his lot with them but for the political agitations 01 

 1857. Returning to the United States he established himself in the 



