112 Dr. Hooker on American Botany. 



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 disticha.) 

 In May 1789, he investigated the mountains of Carolina, 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 Rho- 

 dodendron, Kahnia, and Azalea ; but was prevented from go- 

 ing so far as he had intended, in consequence of a dispute be- 

 tween the Indians and the white people, which rendered it 

 unsafe for Europeans to venture among the former. He 

 therefore returned to Charleston by New York and Phila- 

 delphia. He now recommended and instructed the Ameri- 

 cans to collect and prepare the root of the Ginseng (Panax 

 quinqaejblia,) 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 

 of tracing the botanical topography of America ; and, having 

 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 Linnwa borealis, Ledum, and 

 some species of Vaccinhim^ 



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 

 Annates du Museum dHistoire 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 and split against the rocks. Such was the state of 

 exhaustion and fatigue to which all the sailors and passengers 

 were reduced, that the greater number would have been lost, 

 but for the assistance that was rendered by the inhabitants 

 of Egmond, a little neighbouring village. Michaux was 



