1864.] MICHAUX AND HIS JOURNEY IN CANADA. 327 



notes of Micliaux, however, give us no details of these excursions 

 lip to the month of iVpril 1787, when he made his jBrst 

 journey to the Alleghanies, going up the Savannah Eiver to its 

 head, and thence gaining the heights of the mountain region. 

 Having made friends with some of the Indians, he then ascended 

 with them one of the tributaries of the Savannah, and reached 

 a branch of the Tennessee on the other side of the mountains. 

 This was the limit of his voyage, and he then returned to Char- 

 leston on the first of July, after a voyage of 300 leagues in 

 South Caroliaa and Georgia. His manuscript notes of this 

 journey contain many observations on the plants met with, and 

 precise indications of their localities. In 1788 and 1789 he vis- 

 ited, successively, Florida, the Lucayan islands, and Virginia, pass- 

 insc throuo'h the mountain reoion of North Carolina. He returned 

 to Charleston from this last excursion in September 1789, but 

 revisited the reoion in the course of the followino- winter, accom- 

 panied by his son, reaching Charleston again in the spring of 1790, 

 where he remained until April 1791. His notes during this year 

 are wanting. 



Michaux had now spent six years in America, his pecuniary 

 resources were nearly exhausted, and he feared to be obliged to 

 return to France without having completed his plans on this 

 continent. He had long desired to add to his studies upon the 

 American Flora, some researches on the geographical distribution 

 of the forest trees, and to determine the native region of each, 

 which he regarded as that in which the plant attains its greatest 

 size and strength. Tlie tulip-tree {Liriodendron tidlpifera) 

 for example, appears in Western Canada with a maximum height of 

 sixty feet, and a diameter of three feet ; while westward, and espe- 

 cially in Kentucky, where it forms by itself vast forests, it reaches 

 a height of one hundred and forty feet, and a diameter of seven 

 or eight feet. To the northward, on the contrary, it becomes 

 rarer and smaller, and Michaux was hence led to regard this tree 

 as a native of Kentucky. In accordance with these views, he 

 resolved to study the topography of the North American trees. 

 He had already extended his travels southward to Florida, but 

 another journey, longer and more difficult, but still more important 

 to his investigations, yet remained to be accomplished, — a visit 

 to Canada and northward as far as Hudson's Bay. This i3roject 

 he attempted in 1792. Leaving Charleston in April, he proceeded 

 northward by land, and, as we learn from his manuscript notes, 



