276 LOUIS AGASSIZ. [CHAP. xi. 



that the steamer was lost; and lamentations on the death 

 of Agassiz were printed and circulated all through Swit- 

 zerland: several of Agassiz's friends and admirers shed 

 tears on reading the announcement of his tragical and 

 premature death. "What a miserable end," says one of 

 his best Swiss friends, " for poor Agassiz ! He was 

 much too valuable a savant to perish in the middle 

 of the ocean." 1 Happily, the report was without foun- 

 dation ; but during the difficult crossing of the Atlantic 

 Agassiz had full time to realize his position. He had 

 left Europe much discouraged and in an extremely 

 serious mood. During the past twenty years, he had 

 acquired a great reputation, but he had had to pay 

 very dear for it. Not only he had worked hard, and 

 had even gone so far as to endanger his social posi- 

 tion, but all his numerous publications had involved 

 pecuniary losses, with the exception of the fishes of 

 Martius and Spix of Brazil, and his two works now in 

 the press in Paris, on the glaciers and the echinoderms. 

 He had contracted debts which must be paid ; and his 

 position at Neuchatel was on this account no longer 

 tenable. Besides, he had formed the habit of having 

 six, eight, and ten persons under his control, to help him 

 in his works as assistants, secretary, artists, and lithog- 

 raphers. He had a family of three children to provide 



1 These two sentences may seem, now, rather melodramatic, but they 

 well reflect the impression really produced. It must be remembered that, 

 in 1846, the crossing of the Atlantic in steamships was in its infancy, 

 many extremely serious accidents were then quite common, and steamers 

 disappeared without leaving traces of any sort after them. Besides, in 

 the centre of the continent, as Switzerland is, a journey to America was 

 considered a great and dangerous undertaking. 



