10 
remains to be effected. For nine years, during which he 
was stationed in Ireland, Mr. Carmichael seems to have been 
preparing his mind for future discoveries, and by a fortunate 
coincidence, Robert Brown, Esq., who has justly been called 
* the first botanist of this or any other age," held a similar 
appointment upon the same station. That the advantages 
arising from this circumstance were improved by Mr. Car- 
michael, can bardly be doubted; and an intimacy was then 
formed between him and the great British botanist, which 
was renewed in after life, when each had risen to eminence 
in his respective line. 
Whatever pleasure he may have received from society 
such as this, his eye could only rest upon objects that others 
had discovered long before, and so long as foreign lands lay 
untrodden and unexplored, Mr. Carmichael could not but 
have a longing desire to visit them. He therefore gladly 
embraced the opportunity of entering the 72d regiment, in 
hopes of being sent to some foreign station; and whether it 
was that he deemed it most conducive to his interests to drop 
his profession as a surgeon, or, as is more probable, that he 
found his duties interfere too much with his favourite pur- 
suits, he exchanged the lancet for the sword, aud entered the 
72d regiment as Ensign. In 1805, his wishes were fully 
accomplished; the corps to which he belonged being one of 
those which formed the expedition under Sir David Baird, 
against the Cape of Good Hope; and from this period he 
carefully noted whatever occurred to him that was deserving 
of remark, keeping a diary, in which, from time to time, he 
entered such observations on men, opinions, climate, plants, 
&c. as might be instructive to others, or amusing to himself. 
He was engaged in the action with the enemy which took 
place on landing at the Cape, and from the account which 
he gives of it, as well as from his general description of 
military movements and stations, we learn that he made his 
new profession his study, and that he was not contented 
merely with being an officer, but brought his talents to bear 
on his occupations, until he knew the general duties which 
he might have to perform, as well as the general rules of the 
