CHAPTER IX 



1881-1884 



MEXICO AND INDIA 



Some defect in Agassiz' s circulation made it very 

 painful, after the days of his youth, for him to pass a 

 winter in New England, and he never did so if he could 

 avoid it ; the few he spent in Cambridge always left him 

 much out of condition in the spring. In the eighties, 

 most of his journeys to warmer climates were taken 

 purely in search of health. These travels formed blanks 

 in his scientific life, and make the amount of work he 

 succeeded in accomplishing all the more remarkable. 

 Indeed, much of his research was pursued in a state of 

 health that would have incapacitated any one with a less 

 determined will. It was, however, impossible for such an 

 active mind not to find much of interest, whether in the 

 archaeology of Central America and Egypt, the geology 

 of North Africa, the structure of the Hawaiian Islands, 

 or the life of India. 



The winter of 1881-82, Agassiz spent in Yucatan 

 and Mexico. A return of his old trouble, brought on 

 by the jolting of the native conveyances of the former 

 country, prevented an extended trip that he had planned 

 with Clarence King to inspect some Mexican mines. 

 King, first Superintendent of the United States Geo- 

 logical Survey, and Director of the famous survey of 

 the fortieth parallel, had apparently a fatal charm for 

 Messrs. Agassiz, Shaw, and Higginson, who were con- 



