356 PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY OF 



to Field-Marshal Kcllernian, and joined the arm^' immediately at 

 Magdeburg. He participated in most of the battles which followed, 

 taking part especially in the bloody one at Leipsic. At the 

 battle of Hanan, he was one of about a dozen who succeeded in 

 crossing a stream, out of some hundreds who were killed or 

 wounded in the attempt, and was captured by the enemj- ; but 

 the officer in charge, in pit}' at the awful destruction which had 

 left so few, sufiered them to go free after a short detention. On 

 the downfall of Napoleon, he resigned his commission, notwith- 

 standing the opposition of his Chief, M. Lodibert. Years after- 

 wards, when this distinguished gentleman was President of the 

 Pharmaceutical Society of Paris, he remembered the former young 

 man of twenty, but now in the United States, and proposed his 

 name in a highly complimentary manner for membership in that 

 institution. Leaving the army, he entered the drug store of M. 

 Fretand, at Nantes, directed the chemical manipulations in the 

 apothecaries' garden, and lectured to the students on medical 

 botany. On the return of Napoleon he at once rejoined the 

 army, and served during the celebrated one lu;ndi'ed days, as one 

 of the National Guards. On the 15th of June, came Waterloo, 

 and on the 26th, the allies entered Paris. Durand, with his 

 strong Napoleonic tendency, was continually under surveillance, 

 to escape which he sailed for the United States, arriving at New 

 York on the 1st of July, 1816. Proceeding to Boston, Bishop 

 Chevrus, a distant relative, introduced him to the leading scientists 

 of that city, and he became superintendent of the chemical 

 laboratorj' of a Mr. Perkins. After a few months, considerations 

 of health led him into a similar i)osition with a Mr. Wesner, at 

 Broad and Race, in Philadelphia, but he found it necessarj' soon 

 after to abandon this pursuit, and devote himself to pharmacy 

 exclusively. 



After a short residence near Baltimore, he obtained a letter 

 of introduction to Dr. Troost, who at that time was engaged in 

 the manufacture of alum and suli)hate of iron, but who lived at 

 Cape Sable, twenty miles away. Mr. Durand's diary gives a 

 graphic account of this journc}', made on foot, in deep snow, through 

 a dense pine forest, in the depth of winter, and with but two 

 houses on the whole track, one of these a country inn filled with 

 pictures of murders of whites b}-^ red-skins, and other phases of 

 Indian life. lie tells of his subsequent meeting with Indians; his 

 fear of his life, but found kind treatment from them ; his taking 

 the wrong trail in the dark, and finding and stopping over night 

 at a farm-house, and of the kind treatment he received there, 

 ending in his being sent under care of a slave to Dr. Troost's the 

 next day. Notwithstanding what he had formerly been through, 

 this little circumstance seems among the most impressing events 

 of his life. He describes Dr. Troost as a gentleman of very primi- 

 tive ai)pearance, leading a sort of backwoodsman's life, but ex- 



