SKETCH OF JEAN-CHARLES HOUZEAU. 549 



passage for the United States. He spent his time in gardening, 

 in drawing architectural designs for the rebuilding of the burnt 

 city, and in making surveys of Matamoras and Brownsville for 

 the consul of the United States. His house sheltered many Texan 

 refugees. At last the American war-ship Kensington appeared at 

 the mouth of the Rio Grande, and Houzeau was given passage 

 on her to New Orleans as a member of the Belgian Academy of 

 Sciences. At New Orleans he identified himself with the interests 

 of the colored population, and became a regular contributor and 

 one of the editors of their French journal, the Union, afterward 

 the Tribune, to which he added an English part. He came north 

 in July, 1863, and resided in Philadelphia till November, 1864, 

 pursuing scientific and literary studies and preparing his book on 

 the Mental Faculties of Animals as compared with those of Man, 

 which was published in 1872. Then he returned to New Orleans 

 and took charge of the Tribune, which became, on the strength 

 of his famous article, Is there any Justice for the Black ? one of 

 the best known and influential journals of the country, contribut- 

 ing to it some eighteen or twenty columns a day. He presided 

 over the Republican Convention of July 30, 1866, which was 

 mobbed, and barely escaped from it with his life by the aid of a 

 back passage. In the next year a division arose among the par- 

 ties interested in the Tribune, with which Houzeau would have 

 nothing to do, and he retired from it. 



Houzeau had hardly landed in the New World when he re- 

 ceived the offer of a professorship of Geology in the Free Uni- 

 versity of Brussels. He declined, but his name was put upon the 

 programmes and kept there for two years, while efforts were con- 

 tinued to induce him to accept. He was disposed to consider 

 more favorably the offer of a position in the military school, 

 made in 1863, but the financial limitations of the institution pre- 

 vented the consummation of the appointment. No settled inten- 

 tion, but accidents arising one after another, kept him in America 

 for twenty years. He formed plans to return to Europe several 

 times, but something occurred to postpone the day. In the mean 

 time his literary and scientific activity suffered but little inter- 

 ruption. He contributed to three or four journals sketches of 

 travel, American life, the Indians, the war, slavery, etc., and to 

 the scientific societies and journals papers on the numerical cal- 

 culus, the radius vector of a new planet, parallax, stellar move- 

 ments, and other subjects ; and, while busiest on the New Orleans 

 Tribune, he taught stenography to a school of colored men, and 

 corresponded with the New York Evening Post. 



A few weeks after giving up the New Orleans Tribune, Hou- 

 zeau removed to Jamaica, where he found a new life of freedom 

 opened up to him with, ample opportunities for study. He took 



