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 eudured 

 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- 

 petalce and Composite, in the third volume of the " Smith- 

 sonian Contributions to Knowledge," as " Plantar Wright- 

 ianse," 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 



