abandonment of the project, and a canoe was built, in which the guide essayed to return by water while his chief rode the remaining horse. Setting forth in this fashion, still beset by Indians, who pilfered from them on every pretext, they soon found that the horse could not keep pace with the boat. The two travellers thereupon agreed to separate, and Nuttall completed the journey to the Verdigris alone, arriving, more dead than alive, on September 15. For a week he was unable to proceed farther; at Fort Smith another long halt was necessary, but on October 16 he began the descent of the Arkansas, and reached New Orleans on February 18, 1820, without further mishap.
Two years later, Nuttall was appointed curator of the botanical garden of Harvard College. He spent several years at Cambridge cultivating rare plants, pursuing his studies, and delivering occasional lectures. These years were fruitful in contributions to Silliman's Journal, the Journal of the Academy of Natural Sciences, the Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, and the American Journal of the Medical Sciences.[1] A little later appeared his Introduction to Systematic and Physiological Botany, and at about the same time he produced the Manual of the Ornithology of the United States and Canada (Part I, Land Birds, Cambridge, 1832; Part II, Water Birds, Boston, 1834). The life at Cambridge was, however, distasteful to him; he declared that he was, like his plants, only vegetating. His instincts and habits drew him to the wilderness, that he might unravel its secrets. About the beginning of 1833, he had received a collection of plants gathered by Captain Nathaniel Jarvis
- ↑ For full titles of the numerous essays, see the sketch of his life, referred to in note 1, ante.
