BIOGRAPHIC SKETCH 21 



of his possessions. Thus ended the domestic life of 

 Rafinesqiie, and thus ended his worldly prospects at 

 the time of his second visit to America. Few men 

 are there who would have done better than Rafi- 

 nesque did under these untoward circumstances. 

 Though broken in spirit and discouraged, he did not 

 completely surrender to the odds of the unequal 

 struggle, but started in anew to woo the coy goddess 

 men call Fortune; this time, however, with purely 

 scientific ends in view, and with nothing to hold 

 him, except painful recollections, to his unfortunate 

 past. Like a man he faced disaster, and like a man 

 he rose above adverse surroundings. 



Two or three years passed in the neighborhood of 

 New York and Philadelphia, mainly devoted to scien- 

 tific work, and that work primarily botanical, when 

 Rafinesque conceived the plan of a botanical excur- 

 sion beyond the Alleghanies into the great valley of 

 the Ohio. At Louisville, on the Falls of the Ohio, 

 dwelt one Tarascon, a friend of his youth in Mar- 

 seilles ; and Clifford, whom he had met in Philadel- 

 phia, was now a resident of Lexington, the Athens 

 of the West at that time. The fame of Audubon, at 

 Henderson, had reached the ears of Rafinesque; and 

 he was not a stranger to that erratic scientific com- 

 munity which had established itself under Richard 

 Owen, at New Harmony, on the Wabash. This 

 latter community was a scientific center in the new 

 world, and Rafinesque knew some of the individuals 

 constituting its personnel. All these facts combined 

 to render the proposed excursion attractive to Rafi- 

 nesque, and in the year 1818 he set out, afoot, on the 

 long journey. 



The incidents of travel were many, but must be 



