CHARLES WRIGHT. 469 
to his favorite avocation. In the summer of 1847-8 he had 
an opportunity of carrying his botanical explorations farther 
south and west. His friend, Dr. Veitch, whom he had known 
in eastern Texas, raised a company of volunteers for the 
Mexican war, then going on (Texas having been annexed 
to the United States), and gave Mr. Wright a position with 
moderate pay and light duties. This took him to Eagle Pass 
on the Mexican frontier, where he botanized on both sides of 
the river. He returned to the north in the autumn of that 
year, with his botanical collections, and passed the ensuing 
winter in Connecticut and at Cambridge. 
In the spring of 1849, Mr. Wright returned to Texas, and, 
at the beginning of the summer, with some difficulty obtained 
leave to accompany the small body of United States troops 
which was sent across the unexplored country from San An- 
tonio to El Paso on the Rio Grande. Notwithstanding some 
commendatory letters from Washington, no other assistance 
was afforded than the conveyance of his trunk and collecting 
paper. He made the whole journey on foot, boarded with 
one of the messes of the transportation train, and endured 
many privations and hardships. The return to the sea-board, 
in autumn, was by rather a more northerly route and under 
somewhat less untoward conditions. The interesting collec- 
tion thus made first opened to our knowledge the botany of 
the western part of Texas. It was published, as to the Poly- 
petale and Composite, in the third volume of the “ Smith- 
sonian Contributions to Knowledge,” as “ Plante Wright- 
ianz,” Part I, in 1852. 
A year and more was then passed in the central portion of 
Texas, awaiting the opportunity for other distant explorations, 
supporting himself in part by teaching a small school. At 
length, in the spring of 1851, he joined the party under Col- 
onel Graham, one of the commissioners for surveying and 
determining the United States and Mexican boundary from 
the Rio Grande to the Pacific, accepting a position partly as 
botanist, partly as one of the surveyors, which assured a com- 
fortable maintenance and the wished for opportunity for 
botanical exploration in an untouched field. Attached only 
