ABIES DOUGLASII. 
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In 1827 (20th March) he started to return to Britain by the annual overland express to Hudson’s Bay, 
botanising as much as he could on his way, passing through the Red River country, the Athabasca, Lake 
Winipeg, &c., to York Factory, and he arrived in England in October the same year. 
For a short time after his return to England, Douglas enjoyed the pleasures of being feted and lionized 
to his heart’s content. But he soon tired of it; his temper was sometimes over-sensitive, and he became 
restless and dissatisfied, and longed to get back to the more rugged but congenial pursuit of nature in her 
own solitudes. 
As an additional compensation for his services, the Council of the Horticultural Society agreed to 
grant him the profits which might accrue from the publication of the Journal of his Travels, which had been 
regularly forwarded to the Society, and is still preserved in their archives, in the preparation of which for the 
press he was offered the assistance of Mr Sabine and Dr Lindley, and Mr Murray, of Albemarle Street, was 
consulted on the subject; but this proffered kindness was rejected by Douglas, who had thoughts of 
preparing the Journal entirely himself. We think his decision was the right one, although, as it has turned 
out, it would have been better had it been different. He was perfectly competent to the task himself, and he 
was a man of too much original thought to make it desirable that his individuality should be merged in a 
tripartite composition ; but if he had consented to the proposition, we should have had the J ournal, while 
now we have it not. He laboured at it during the time he was in England, but never completed it. 
After spending two years in London, his wishes to return to the exploration of the wilds of North-West 
America were gratified, and he sailed in the beginning of November 1829, with extended aims. In addition 
to his proper mission as Collector for the Horticultural Society, he was also employed by the Colonial Office 
to take observations upon magnetic and atmospheric phenomena, as well as for geographical purposes, and 
the Colonial Office accordingly supplied him with instruments, and contributed to the expenses of the 
expedition. 
He again went out by the long route (round Cape Horn) and arrived at the Columbia River on 3d 
June 1830, the ship having touched at Oahoo, in the Sandwich Islands, where he was so much interested 
with the place and vegetation as to lead to his returning to it afterwards, there to find his grave. The 
remainder of 1830 he spent in further exploring the country around the Columbia River, and many fine 
additions were made, by that year’s work, to the plants now in England. 
The year 1831 he spent in exploring California, a country, the botany of which was, until his expedition, 
almost unknown. He sailed from the Columbia for Monterey, and arrived there on 22d December 1830, 
when spring had already commenced. He occupied himself until the end of April in making excursions in 
the neighbourhood of Monterey. He next made an excursion southwards to Santa Barbara, in the middle 
of May, where he made a short stay, and returned late in June by the same route, occasionally penetrating 
the mountain valleys which skirt the coast. He shortly after started for San Francisco, and proceeded to 
the north of that port. He says, in a letter to Sir W. Hooker: “ My principal object was to reach the spot 
whence I returned in 1826, which, I regret to say, could not be accomplished. My last observation was at 
38° 45 /7 , which leaves an intervening blank of sixty-five miles: small as this distance may appear to you, it 
was too much for me.” Douglas’s observations must have been inaccurate, or the distance much greater than 
he supposed, for 38° 45 /7 is very little more northerly than the latitude of San Francisco. His whole collection 
of that year in California only amounted to five hundred species, a little more or less, and he wrote: “ This 
is vexatiously small, I am aware; but when I inform you that the season for botanising does not last longer 
than three months, your surprise will cease. Such is the rapidity with which spring advances, as on the 
table lands of Mexico, and the platforms of the Andes in Chili, the plants bloom here only for a day. The 
intense heats set in about June, when every bit of herbage is dried to a cinder.” Noth withstanding this, he 
succeeded in introducing into the gardens in England, by seeds or otherwise, forty-four new California plants, 
from this year’s exploring, most of them our standard Californian favourites to the present day. 
No opportunity of leaving California occurred in the autumn and winter of 1831, or the spring and 
summer of 1832, the Hudson’s Bay Company’s vessel not having called at Monterey. He thus remained 
[ 29 ] g longer 
