Biography of F. A. Michaux, 175 



never ceased to sliow liim tlie greatest esteem and afFection. He 

 was alwa-Ys happj to see some transatlantic acquaintance. All 

 the Americans; who have seen him in Paris, or at his country 

 residence of Vaureal, can testify to the urbanity of his manners, 

 and to the cordiality with which he received his visitors. In 

 conversation with AmericanSj nothing afforded him more pleas- 

 ure than the subject of this country. He listened with amaze- 

 ment to the wonderful accounts of its progress, of the rapid in- 

 crease of its population, of its wealth and resources, of its success 

 in war and in diplomacy. The names of new cities and innu- 

 merable towns, located on sites which, in his time, were still 

 covered with the native forests; the mention of multifarious 

 rail-ways, extending their arms in all directions and encircling 

 the whole country in an immense net-work of iron; the speedy 

 steam travelling by land and water, which would have rendered 

 his long and painful journeys so short and so easy; in fine, the 

 electro-magnetic telegraph, another offspring of American genius 

 • — all these wonderful achievements elicited from him the great- 

 est amazement and the most emphatic exclamations: Mon Dieu, 

 Men Dien, est il possible! 



He felt proud to mention that he had been one of the first 

 steam navigators, and boasted of an early acquaintance with 

 Fulton, whom he met at Albany in 1807 under the following 

 circumstances : He was then returning to New York city from 

 his exploration to the lakes Ontario and Erie, and intended to 

 take passage in a packet boat for New York ; but seeing an ad- 

 vertisement of a steamboat to depart the same morning, he had 

 the curiosity to examine her, and he determined to take passage 

 on her. Strange to say, he and a Frenchman who accompanied 

 him, were the only passengers on board ; it was the first trial 

 trip. Fulton was on board, and, as might be supposed, between 

 two such men, speaking equally well the French language, an 

 intimate friendship was formed, which continued through life. 

 The ardor of this friendship on Michaux's part, was proved by 

 his devotion to Fulton's memory. 



Michaux, having found in Paris a model, in clay, of a bust of 



his friend by Houdon, bought it and caused it to be put in mar- 

 ble by the best artist he could find, at the cost of 1000 francs. 

 He obtained permission afterwards from the Government to have 

 it placed in the Marine Department of the Louvre, near that of 

 Papin, who had done so much for steam. 



Michaux\s turn of mind was also literary. Besides his great 

 work on the North American trees^ his journey to the west of the 

 Alleghany Mountains and the memoirs already mentioned, he 

 published, in 1831, an essay on the Planera crenata; in 1852, a 

 lueraoir on the causes of Yellow Fever in the United States^ and 

 another one on the culture of the Vine. He may have left also, at 



