466 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES. 
river threatened to sweep away his cabin, when he took to his 
canoe, and dropped down the stream among the floating logs 
and masses of ice. In 1844 he returned to Old Prussia on a 
visit, at Konigsberg made the acquaintance of Ernest Meyer, 
the professor of botany, and learned from him — what he 
would have been most glad to know before — that dried speci- 
mens of plants for the herbarium might be disposed of at a 
reasonable price. Returning to St. Louis,he began to collect 
plants in this view, took the botanical specimens to Dr. Engel- 
mann, who gave him botanical assistance and encouragement. 
In 1846 Dr. Engelmann and the writer of this notice obtained 
permission for the transportation of Mr. Fendler and his lug- 
gage along with the body of United States troops which took 
possession of Santa Fé, New Mexico; there he remained for 
about a year, and made his well-known New Mexican collec- 
tion, the first-fruits of the botany of that interesting district. 
In 1849 he attempted another western botanical expedition, 
this time with Salt Lake in view. But on the plains he lost 
all his drying-paper in a flood of the Little Blue River; and 
he returned to St. Louis, to find that all his collections, books, 
journals, and other possessions had been burnt in the great 
conflagration which had just devastated that city. He now 
sought a different climate, and, at the approach of winter, 
went to the Isthmus of Panama for four months, made at 
Chagres an interesting botanical collection, returned by way _ 
of New Orleans to Arkansas, and to Memphis on the Ten- 
nessee side of the river, where for three years he carried on 
the camphene-light business, botanizing in the vicinity when 
he could. In 1854, the introduction of gas having made his 
occupation unprofitable, and a craving for new scenes being 
strong upon him, he sailed for La Guayra, went up to Carac- 
eas and thence to Colonia Tovar, 6500 feet above the sea, 
built his cabin on the mountain side, where he lived four or 
five years and amassed his large and fine Venezuelan collec- 
tions of dried plants, so well known in the principal herbaria 
of the world. His principal companions were his thermometer 
and barometer, and his careful meteorological observations 
were published by the Smithsonian "Institution, in the report 
