CHAPTER VI 
THE VOYAGE OF THE HASSLER 
1871-1872 
Y the late autumn of 1870 Agassiz’s health was in 
sufficiently good condition to admit of his accepting 
a proposal from Dr. Benjamin Peirce, the Superintendent 
of the Coast Survey, to form an expedition for deep-sea 
dredging, which sailed on December 4 of the next year on 
the Hassler, a surveying steamer bound for California. 
With him Agassiz had one of his students from the Mu- 
seum, two other naturalists — the Count de Pourtalés and 
Dr. Franz Steindachner, — Dr. Thomas Hill, the ex-pres- 
ident of Harvard University, and Mrs. Agassiz. Captain 
Johnson, the commander of the vessel, and Mrs. Johnson, 
as well as the officers, took so keen an interest in the pur- 
poses of the expedition that they added greatly to the pleas- 
ure of the voyage. The course of the Hassler was directed 
first to the West Indies, from there to Rio de Janeiro, 
Monte Video, and the Gulf of Mathias, thence to the 
Straits of Magellan, where manifold beautiful harbors of- 
fered anchorages, and afterward up the Patagonian coast 
to Concepcion Bay, where she lay at Talcahuana for re- 
pairs, while Agassiz and Mrs. Agassiz went by land to 
Santiago and Valparaiso; here they were met by the Hassler, 
which proceeded to Callao on the Peruvian coast, then to 
the Galapagos, and ended her voyage by way of Panama 
and San Diego at San Francisco, entering the Golden Gate 
in August, 1872. Under Agassiz’s direction Mrs. Agassiz 
