12 BOTANICAL EXCURSION TO 
return to the sea-coast. In crossing from Jonesborough, 
Tennessee, to Morganton, by way of Joe River (not Doe 
River, as stated in his Travels), he accidentally stopped at 
the house of Davenport, his father’s guide in these mountains. 
The observations of the younger Michaux on this part of the 
Alleghany Mountains, in a chapter of his Travels devoted to 
that subject, are mainly accurate. 
“In the beginning of 1805," Pursu, as he states in the 
preface to his Flora, * set out for the mountains and western ` 
territories of the Southern States, beginning at Maryland and 
extending to the Carolinas (in which tract the interesting high 
mountains of Virginia and Carolina took my particular atten- 
tion), returning late in the autumn through the lower coun- 
tries along the sea-coast to Philadelphia.” This plan, 
however, was not fully carried out, since he does not appear 
to have crossed the Alleghanies into the great Western | 
Valley, nor to have botanized along these mountains farther ` 
south than where the New River crosses the Valley of | 
Virginia. 
At any rate it is certain that the original tickets of his ` 
specimens in the herbarium of the late Professor Barton, — 
under whose patronage he travelled, as well as those in Mr. 
Lambert’s collection, furnish no evidence that he extended his 
researches into the mountainous portion of North Carolina; | 
but it appears probable (from some labels marked Halifax, or | 
Mecklenburg, Virginia), that he followed the course of the ` 
Roanoke into the former State. His most interesting collec- — 
tions were made at Harper's Ferry, Natural Bridge, the ` 
Peaked Mountain (which separates the two principal branches ` 
of the Shenandoah), the Peaks of Otter in the Blue Ridge; 
also Cove Mountain, Salt-pond Mountain, and Parnell's Knob 
(with the situation of which I am unacquainted), the region 
around the Warm Sulphur Springs, the Sweet Springs, and 
the mountains of Monroe and Greenbrier counties. 
Early in the present century, Mr. Kin, a German nursery- - 
man and collector, resident at Philadelphia, travelled some- ` 
what extensively among the Alleghany Mountains, chiefly - 
