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treasures to his friend and patron, studying them with him, 

 and preparing them for the herbarium. His earliest botani- 

 cal excursions out of the vicinity of Philadelphia were in the 

 lower part of the peninsula, between the Delaware and Chesa- 

 peake, and subsequently on the coast of Virginia and North 

 Carolina. So zealous was he in the pursuit of his vocation, 

 that he was deterred by no trifles. At the season of the year 

 when, in the Southern swamps, the musquitoes were very nu- 

 merous, and had made such an impression upon his face and 

 hands as, unconsciously to himself, to give him the appear- 

 ance of a man attacked with small-pox, upon approaching a 

 habitation he was refused admittance by the people of the 

 house, and with difficulty could he persuade them that he was 

 only bitten by insects. 



On his return from those explorations, he made the ac- 

 quaintance of Mr. John Bradbury, a Scotch naturalist, who 

 had come to America for the purpose of visiting the interior 

 of the country, and to collect new objects of natural history. 

 Nuttall, with eagerness, embraced this opportunity to gratify 

 his ardent desire for distant travelling, and his passion for 

 the study of Nature ; he offered to accompany Bradbury, and 

 his request was accepted. They started together from St. 

 Louis with a party of traders and hunters, on the 31st of 

 December, 1809, less than two years after his arrival in this 

 country. They crossed the Kansas and Platte rivers, passed 

 through different Indian tribes, reached the Mandan villages, 

 where Lewis and Clarke had spent the winter of 1804 and 5, 

 ascended still higher the Missouri River, and returned, after 

 having experienced the greatest fatigues and dangers. They 

 were pursued and robbed by the Indians, and Bradbury fell 

 into their hands, and was very near being massacred by 

 them ; he only saved his life by taking his watch to pieces, 

 and distributing the works among them as trinkets. As to 

 Nuttall, overcome by fatigue and hunger, driven to despair in 

 the midst of the wilderness, and unable to go a step farther, 

 he laid himself down with resignation, and would inevitably 

 have died, had he not been found by a friendly Indian, who 



