160 A BOTANICAL EXPEDITION.

to pursue his course. At length, after nearly a
year had elapsed, he embarked at Cadiz, and hap-
pily accomplished the voyage in six months, arriv-
ing at Lima in the spring of 1778, where he
- obtained a favourable reception from the viceroy
and from M. de Bordenave, an old acquaintance of
his illustrious friend Jussieu.

His first botanical expedition, towards Quito, was
not without danger from hordes of runaway ne-
groes; but he thought himself amply repaid by
securing an abundant harvest of plants, as well as of
antiquities, from the sepulchres of the ancient Peru-
vians. These, together with a collection of seeds,
a fine herbarium, and a considerable quantity of
platina, he immediately sent to Europe. The seeds
had been partly picked up in the dry season from
the arid sands around Lima, where they lay, blown
about by the wind, or stored up by ants, awaiting
the autumnal fogs necessary to their germination,
for it never rains at Lima. He accompanied his
coliections with two manuscript treatises of his
own; one on a disease which he attributed to the
immoderate use of certain fruits of that country ;
and the other on a new but useless species of
Laurus, which ignorant observers had reported to
the Spanish Government as being the true cinna-
mon, a mistake which he found himself obliged to
rectify. He was subsequently employed by the