Botanical Explorations of Thomas Nuttall. Ill 



Columbia was exclusively a fur trade, and, while the trading 

 vessels went frequently to the Hawaiian Islands to get provis- 

 ions or sometimes to take on a cargo of sandal-wood for delivery 

 at some eastern Asiatic port, they seldom had occasion to stop 

 in California as thej^ sailed to or from Cape Horn. 



Of Nuttall's movements immediately after the 1st of October, 



1835, we have only an indirect record. Presumably he reached 

 Honolulu, as he intended, and certainly he must have sailed al- 

 most immediately for California, for his collections from the 

 Hawaiian Islands are very scanty and probably, indeed, were 

 all made during his previous visit there. 



In the absence of any direct account of Nuttall's movements 

 in Calift)rnia, it seemed best to collate the type localities of the 

 new species of plants described by him as collected in that State, 

 and with this in view a search has been made through the works 

 in which most of these California collections were published, 

 namely, the seventh and eighth volumes of the Transactions of 

 the American Philosophical Society, new series, 1840 to 1843, 

 and in Torrey and Gray's Flora of North America, 1838 to 1843. 

 As a result, it appears that Nuttall's California collections were 

 made at Monterey, Santa Barbara, San Pedro (the port of Los 

 Angeles), and San Diego, in March, April, and May, 1836. He 

 did not visit the California coast north of Monterey. 



At San Diego Nuttall secured passage for Boston on the vessel 

 Alert, which was carrying a load of hides from California to New 

 England by way of Cape Horn. She left San Diego May 8, 



1836. This voyage has an added interest from the fact that the 

 vessel carried also the Massachusetts boy, R. H. Dana, who after- 

 ward wrote '' Two Years before the Mast." His references to 

 Nuttall are interesting. 



"This passenger, the first and only one we Iiad had [on board the trad- 

 ing vessel Alert, of Boston], except to go from port to port, on the coast, 

 was no one else tlian a gentleman whom I had known in my better days, 

 and the last person I should have expected to have seen on the coast of 

 California, Professor [Thomas] N[uttall], of Cambridge, [Massachusetts]. 

 I had left him quietly seated in the chair of Botany and Ornithology, in 

 Harvard University, and the next T saw of him was strolling about San 

 Diego beach, California, in a sailor's pea-jacket, with a wide straw hat, 

 and barefooted, with his trousers rolled up to his knees, picking up stones 

 and shells. He had traveled overland to the Northwest Coast, and come 

 down in a small vessel to Monterey. [Dana evidently knew nothing 

 al)Out Nuttall's trips to the Hawaiian Islands.] There he learned that 



