PLANT/E UTOWAN/E. 



CHARLES F. MILLSPAUGH, M.D. 



Mr. Allison V. Armour, of Chicago through whose generous 

 patronage the author made his first collection in Yucatan for this 

 Museum during December, 1894, and January, 1895 wishing to 

 advance the knowledge of the flora of that peninsula and to afford 

 the opportunity of correlating its vegetation with that of the coastal 

 region of the Greater Antilles, again planned his winter cruise in 

 1898-1899 that it might embrace as many as possible of the more 

 important points at which the study of the question could be profit- 

 ably conducted. He therefore placed his new auxiliary steam sail- 

 ing yacht "Utowana" in commission, and invited Messrs. Jordan L. 

 Mott, Jr., and Edward S. Isham, Jr., of New York, and Mr. Edward 

 P. Allen, photographer of this Museum, and myself as his guests. 



THE ITINERARY. 



December 21, 1898, was set for sailing, but, delayed by the 

 memorable fog that hung over the east coast during the 21st, 22d 

 and 23d, departure was not taken from the dock at the foot of West 

 Thirty-fourth street, New York, until eight o'clock on the morning of 

 the 24th. The wind, which had been in the west during the morn- 

 ing, fell in the afternoon, and using steam a course was laid from 

 Sandy Hook for the Bermudas. During the evening and night a 

 gale came up out of the southeast, and the next two days were 

 spent beating against the wind and fighting the cross-sea of the 

 Gulf Stream in weather so gloomy that satisfactory observations 

 could not be made. Trusting to a faulty sight rather than reliable 

 dead-reckoning, our captain missed the islands to the southward, 

 and noon on the 27th found us sixty miles to the eastward of our 

 intended port. As we came about, the wind, with Atlantic perver- 

 sity, also shifted into the west, and we were compelled to fight our 

 way back against even rougher water than before. During the mid- 

 night watch the seas broke over us with such force that two of our 



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