Dr, Hooker on American Botany. 267 



was formed at Charleston, for tlie reception of the productions 

 of the Carolinas and the Alleghany mountains, 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^jwoods of the intervening plains, through 

 thickets* of Rhodode^idr on, Kalmia, and' Azalea ; but was pre- 

 vented from going so far as he had intended, in consequence 

 of a dispute between the Indians and the white^p^ople, which 

 rendered it unsafe for Europeans to venture among the for- 

 mer. He 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 m.anner 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 Linncea borealis, Ledum, and 

 some species of Vaccinium.'^ 



Michaux did not return to Europe till 1706, 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 Nalurelle. "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 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 



