Letters of Asa Gray; Vol. 2

by Asa Gray

Sinner that I am, I have four letters of yours unanswered; the last from Simon’s Bay, November 4th. The fact is I do not find time to write half the letters I ought, and those, like yours, which are not to be dispatched on some particular day, I am sure to postpone and neglect interminably. It seems so vague, too, to be writing to a man, you know not where, somewhere on the other side of the world, and you know not when the epistle may reach him, say six months hence.

Nor is it easy to reflect and remember what I have been doing, so as to tell you....

I forgot to tell you, too, that Thurber[27] called on me and offered his plants collected under Bartlett. I have written out the greater part up to the end of Compositæ, my old sticking-place, a number of new things, mostly from deeper down in Sonora than you went, and in southwest California. Beyond doubt Torrey will work up a part. I shall merely furnish characters and botanical remarks to Thurber, and let him do all the rest of the talk. Bartlett is still in hopes that the Senate will print a great report for him. I greatly doubt if they do. If so, Thurber’s botany will go as an appendix. If not, he will make a memoir of the things up to Compositæ, and the striking things beyond, and afterwards I may lick up the rest in the general continuation of “Plantæ Wrightianæ,” etc.

Meanwhile the United States minister at Mexico has been making a treaty, now before our Senate, for buying a further slice of Chihuahua and Sonora, to take in Lake Guzman and the Sonora country some way south of where you went, that is, below San Pedro. So there will have to be a new survey if this treaty is ratified, and a chance of more botany. I wish you were to be here to attend to it; only you have already taken off the cream of that country, and can now do more, and find more novelty, in some of the countries you are going to.

From Governor Stevens’s party, from Minnesota to Washington Territory, north of Oregon, bundles of plants are sent home to Baird and by him forwarded to me. Wretched specimens, and nothing new among them!...

Captains at sea are very apt to get a little crusty, which should be minded just as little as possible. I expect to hear that, after getting well settled and at home in the Vincennes, you find yourself comfortable and all pleasant. Gentlemanly conduct and devotion to one’s pursuits will at length make one respected, anywhere.

When you return, I trust you will yourself prepare the botanical report of your cruise. I hope so, for your own sake, both scientifically and because your doing so will keep you on pay some years longer on shore. I will aid you, if I live, most willingly over knotty points, etc.; perhaps would like to do certain families further than that; not, if you will take hold of it yourself, as you ought to do.

I suppose you will have found nothing new at the Cape, though the vegetation there must have been novel to you. It will be pleasant, in the long cruises, to study yourself the plants collected at the last port. Did you get any nice Algæ? Look out for them hereafter.

When you are on surveying-ground, you may probably be transferred back to the steamer again.

Presently your letters will be coming to me via California. I hope to continue to hear such good accounts of your health and activity. Do not measure my interest in your letters by the number I myself write, though I mean to write oftener in future. No news here, scientific or other. Mr. Carey, you know, has gone back to England to live, and has married a young wife there, moreover.