18SS.] «» [Sargent. 



him for the simple and laborious life of a farmer of the miiUlle class, and 

 his schooling ended in his fourteenth year. His father died three years 

 later, and Andre and his brother became joint managers of tlie farm. 

 This arrangement lasted for four years, during which the self-reliance and 

 power to resist hardship and fatigue, which later distinguished the explorer 

 of the Persian deserts and of the trackless wilds of the Carolina forests, 

 were no doubt acquired and developed. 



Michaux married, in 17(59, Cecil Claye, the daughter of a rich farmer 

 of Beauce, who died a year later in giving birth to a son, Francois Andie 

 Michaux, the historian of the forest-trees of North America. The sudden 

 termination of his married life made a more active and exciting occupa- 

 tion necessary to him and ended his agricultural career. Fortunately one 

 of his neighbors, devoted to horticulture and botany, became interested in 

 the young man and directed his attention to these subjects ; and he soon 

 became inspired with a desire to travel for the purpose of bringing back 

 to France the useful plants of other countries, especially those of the 

 Orient. This idea became so fixed in his mind that he gave up his Airm 

 and devoted himself to the study of natural history and languages, and 

 having the good fortune to make the acquaintance of Bernard de Jussieu, 

 at that time in charge of the gardens of the Trianon, he passed some time 

 with him there, and afterwards at the Museum in Paris, in perfecting 

 himself in botany. Michaux's first journeys were made at this time. He 

 visited England and studied the English collections of plants, and English 

 methods of horticulture, and in 1788 was invited to join a party of botan- 

 ists, including Lamarck and Tliouin, in an excursion to the mountains of 

 Auvergne. The zeal, activity and enthusiasm of the young collector were 

 the admiration of the party, and led no doubt to his selection shortly after- 

 ward to accompany the French consul, Russeau, to Persia. The royal 

 treasury supplied the money for this journey. 



Michaux left Paris in 1782 for Aleppo and Bagdad, which he reached after 

 a journey of thirty days across the desert ; liere he separated from the consu- 

 lar party for the purpose of exploring the country between the Tigris and the 

 Euphrates. He traveled extensively and mastered Persian, even wn-iling, 

 one of his biographers tells us, a dictionary of that language. This journey 

 nearly cost Michaux his life at the hands of a party of marauding Arabs who 

 seized and stripped him and were about to end his days, when he was 

 rescued by the English consul at Bassora, who supplied him with the 

 means of continuing his journey to Ispahan. Two years were then 

 devoted to the exploration of the little known region between the Indian 

 ocean and the Caspian sea. From this long and arduous journey Michaux 

 returned to Paris early in 1785, bringing with him a valuable herbarium 

 and a large collection of seeds. The hardships and sufferings whicli he 

 had endured only served to stimulate his love of adventure and remark- 

 able energy ; and he had scarcely arrived in Paris before he was planning 

 another journey which was to embrace the country east of the Caspian sea 

 and to extend into Cashmere and Thibet. Fortunately, however, for the 



