ow 
Dr. Hooker on American Botany. 287 
was formed at Charleston, for the rece the productions 
of the Carolinas and the Alleghany m ins, which he ex- 
plored with great difficulty and danger, travelling no less than 
900 miles across the wilds of Carolina and Georgia alone. 
Thence he visited Spanish Florida, making his way up the 
rivers for considerable distances, in a canoe hollowed out 
from a single trunk of the deciduous Cypress (Cupressus dis- 
ticha). In May 1789, he investigated the mountains of Caro- 
lina, and, assisted by some Indian guides, without whom it 
would have been impossible to have made any progress ; he 
penetrated the vast,woods of the intervening plains, through 
thickets"of Rhododendron, Kalmia, and’ Azalea ; but was pre- 
2 vented from going so faras he had intended, in consequence 
. of a dispute between the Indians and the white'people, which 
rendered it unsafe for Europeans to venture among the for- 
er e therefore returned to Charleston by New-York 
and Philadelphia. He now recommended and instructed the 
Americans to collect and prepare the root of the Ginseng 
(Panax quinquefolia,) in the same manner as the Chinese do 
for sale ; and, for a long time, a trade was actually carried 
on with China in that article. : 
Michaux had still another object in view, which was that 
2 of tracing the botanical topography of America ; and, having 
so effected so much in the southern States, he resolved to ex- 
tend his researches as far north as Hudson’s Bay _In short, 
he arrived at a country, where, as he says himself, “ nought 
but a dreary vegetation was found, consisting of black and 
stunted pines, which bore their cones at four feet only from 
the ground ; dwarf Birch and Service Trees, a creeping Ju- 
niper, the Black Currant, the Linnea borealis, Ledum, and 
some species of Vaccinium.” ee 
Michaux did not return to Europe till 1796, when he was 
shipwrecked on the coast of Holland. The circumstance is 
thus related by his biographer in the third volume of the 
Annales du Museum d@ Histoire Naturelle. “The passage had 
not been unpropitious ; but on the 18th of September, when 
in sight of the shores of Holland, a dreadful tempest arose ; 
} the sails were rent, the masts broken, and the vessel struck 
Bee and split against the rocks. Such was the state of exhaustion 
*\ and fatigue to which all the sailors and passengers were re. 
duced, that the greater number would have been lost. but for 
the assistance that was rendered by the inhabitants of Eg- 
mond, a little neighbouring village. Michaux was lashed to 
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