should proceed to North America in order to make a study of forest trees, and experiment with regard to their transplantation to France. Accordingly, in the autumn of 1785, he left France, taking with him his young son.

Landing in New York he passed a year and a half in that vicinity, herborizing, and attempting a botanical garden. Finding the latitude of the Southern states, however, more suited to his enterprise, he removed in the spring of 1787 to Charleston. Purchasing a plantation about ten miles from the city, he entered with enthusiasm into the search for new plants and their culture upon his estate. In this year he explored the mountains of the Carolinas, and a twelve-month later made a difficult and hazardous journey through the swamps and marshes of Florida. The next year (1789) was occupied by a voyage to the Bahamas, and another search among the mountains for plants of a commercial nature — notably ginseng, whose utility he taught the mountaineers.

In 1794 he undertook a most difficult expedition to Canada and the arctic regions about Hudson Bay, and upon his return proposed to the American Philosophical Society at Philadelphia an exploration of the great West by way of the Missouri River. A subscription was begun for this purpose, and Jefferson drafted for him detailed instructions for the journey;' but his services were needed in another direction, and the Missouri exploration was abandoned for a political mission.

The discontent of the Western settlers with regard to the free navigation of the Mississippi had reached an acute stage; the French minister to the United States had come armed with instructions to secure the co-opera

1 See documents in Original Journals of Lewis and Clark (New York, 1904), appendix.

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tion of trans-Allegheny Americans for a raid upon the Spanish territory of Louisiana, aimed to recover that province for the power to which it had formerly belonged, and make it a basis for revolutionary movements in Canada, the West Indies, and ultimately all Spanish America. This minister arrived in Charleston in February, 1793, and selected Michaux as his agent to communicate with the Kentucky leaders. An ardent republican, already in the pay of the French government, and friendly with influential men in government circles, Michaux seemed a most desirable as well as the most available agent possible. One characteristic was not, however, sufficiently considered. Whatever may have been his interest in the intrigue, whatever accounts thereof are through caution or prudence omitted from the journal here printed, one fact is evident — that Michaux was chiefly devoted to the cause of science; these pages reveal that a rare plant or new tree interested him much more than an American general or a plot to subvert Spanish tyranny.

His first Kentucky journey was, from the point of view of the diplomats, but moderately successful. With the collapse of the enterprise - due to the imprudence of Genet, the firmness of Washington, the growing loyalty of the Westerners to the new federal government, and the change of leaders in France - Michaux returned to botanical pursuits, and his later journeys appear to have been undertaken solely in order to herborize. There are, however, some slight indications in the text that he entertained hope of continuing the enterprise, and of its ulti

* See Turner, "Origin of Genet's Projected Attack on Louisiana and the Floridas" in American Historical Review, July, 1897; also documents in American Historical Association Report, 1896 and 1897.

mate success. His inquiries, in the Cumberland, for guides for the Missouri expedition, prove that he had by no means abandoned his purpose of undertaking that hazardous project.

But these long Western journeys had exhausted his resources; for seven years he had had no remittance from the French government, and was now under the necessity of returning to Europe to attend to his affairs. Accordingly in 1796 he embarked for France, and was shipwrecked on the coast of Holland, losing part of his collections; but his herbarium was preserved, and is now in the Musée de Paris. He ardently desired to be ser.t back to America; but his government offered him no encouragement, and finally he accepted a post upon an expedition to New Holland, and in November, 1802, died of fever upon the island of Madagascar.

His son, François André, entered into his father's pursuits and greatly assisted him. While yet a lad, he accompanied him on several arduous journeys in America; at other times remaining upon the plantation, engaged in the care of the transplanted trees. He returned to France some years before his father, in order to study medicine, and in the year of the latter's death was commissioned by the French minister of the interior to proceed to the United States to study forests and agriculture in general.

The journal of his travels was not originally intended for print; but the interest aroused in the Western region of the United States by the sale of Louisiana, induced its publication. The first French edition appeared in 1804, under the title, Voyage à l'ouest des Monts Alleghanys, dans les États de l'Ohio, et du Kentucky, et du Tennessée, et retour a Charleston par les Hautes-Carolines. Another

edition appeared in 1808. The first was soon Englished by B. Lambert, and two editions with different publishers issued from London presses in 1805. The same year another translation, somewhat abridged, appeared in volume i of Phillip's Collection of Voyages. Neither of · these translations is well executed. The same year, a German translation issued from the Weimar press.

The younger Michaux continued to be interested in the study of trees, and spent several years in preparing the three volumes of Histoire des Arbres forestiers de l'Amérique Septentrionale, which appeared in 1810-13. This was translated, and passed through several English editions, with an additional volume added by Thomas Nuttall under the title of The North American Sylva.

Michaux's report on the naturalization of American forest trees, made to the Société d'Agriculture du département de la Seine, was printed in 1809. His "Notice sur les Isles Bermudas, et particulièrement sur l'Isle St. George" was published in Annales des Sciences naturelles (1806), volume viii. He also assisted in editing his father's work, Histoire des Chênes de l'Amérique; and his final publication on American observations was Mémoire sur les causes de la fièvre jaune, published at Paris in 1852. Dr. Michaux died at Vauréal, near Pontoise, in 1855.

In 1824 the younger Michaux presented to the American Philosophical Society at Philadelphia the notebooks containing the diary of his father's travels in America - all save those covering the first two years (1785-87), which were lost in the shipwreck on the coast of Holland. The value of these journals has long been known to scientists; their larger interest, as revealing both political and social conditions in the new West, will

See review in Monthly Anthology (Boston, 1810), viii, p. 280.

perhaps be first recognized upon this presentation of them in English form. Written "by the light of his lonely campfires, during brief moments snatched from short hours of repose, in the midst of hardships and often surrounded by dangers," their literary form is deficient, and frequent gaps occur, which doubtless were intended to be filled in at some future moments of leisure. This was prevented by the author's untimely death in the midst of his labors. For nearly a century the journals existed only in manuscript. In 1884 Charles S. Sargent, director of the Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University, prepared the manuscript for the press, with explanatory notes chiefly on botanical matters. It was published in the original French, in the American Philosophical Society Proceedings, 1889, pp. 1-145.

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From this journal of nearly eleven years' travel in America - from Florida on the south, to the wilds of the Hudson Bay country on the north, from Philadelphia and Charleston on the Atlantic coast to the most remote Western settlements, and the Indian lands of the Illinois, Kentucky, and Tennessee - we have selected for translation and inclusion within our series, the portions that concern particularly the trans-Allegheny region. These relate to the expedition made to Kentucky by way of the Ohio (1793), with the return over the Wilderness Road and through the Valley of Virginia; and the longer journey (1795-96) from Charleston to Tennessee, thence through Kentucky to the Illinois, and back by a similar route with side excursions on the great Western rivers.

The notes in the journals of the elder Michaux signed C. S. S., are those of Sargent, found in the French edition and designed chiefly to elucidate botanical references.