AUGUSTUS FENDLER. 1 



After Dr. Engelmann's death, the beginning of a notice 

 of Mr. Fendler was found upon his table, from which it was 

 learned that he had died at Trinidad, some time previous. 

 Inquiries sent to the Port of Spain, where he had for several 

 years resided, remain unanswered. An autobiographical ac- 

 count which he addressed to a correspondent (and which, with 

 some of his letters, we hope will before long be printed) en- 

 ables us to state that Mr. Fendler was born at Gumbinnen, 

 on the easternmost borders of Prussia, January 10, 1813, lost 

 his father in infancy, was sent to the gymnasium of the town 

 when twelve years old, but was at sixteen apprenticed to the 

 town clerk, where, perhaps, he perfected the neat and clear 

 handwriting with which his correspondents are familiar. 

 Having a fondness for mathematics and chemistry, he ob- 

 tained in 1834, upon examination, a nomination to the Royal 

 Polytechnic School at Berlin, but relinquished it after a year 

 on account of delicate health. In 1836 he came from Bremen 

 to Baltimore, " with a couple of dollars in his pocket," worked 

 in a tan-yard in Philadelphia, then in a lamp factory in New 

 York; in 1838 he traveled in the most economical way to 

 St. Louis, which required thirty days, and was employed by a 

 lamp-maker who made " spirit-gas " for lighting public-houses, 

 coal-gas being then unknown so far west. Soon after, he 

 made his way to New Orleans and to Texas, where he was 

 witness to the ravages of yellow fever in the summer and fall 

 of 1839. He returned to Illinois, broken in health and empty 

 in purse, taught school for some time ; then, the spirit of wan- 

 dering and of solitude coming strongly upon him, he took pos- 

 session of an uninhabited island in the Missouri River, about 

 three hundred miles above St. Louis, where he enjoyed a her- 

 mit's life for six months, and until a great spring rise of the 



1 American Journal of Science and Arts, 3 ser., xxix. 169. (1885.) 



