VICTOR JACQUEMONT, THE NATURALIST TRAVELLER.
The story of the life of Victor Jacquemont, the Indian traveller, differs from that of the martyrs of geographical discovery. He penetrated with surprising energy and perseverance into lands rarely visited by Europeans; but his object was not to trace the course of a river, or to determine the position of some place as yet unknown upon the maps: the principle which sustained him was a devotion to natural science which no amount of peril or hardship could extinguish. To examine the botany, the geology, and the animal life of unexplored regions was the passion of his life. Some anecdotes of this remarkable man will sufficiently indicate these features in his character.
Having already acquired a reputation from his scientific travels in South America, Jacquemont, still a young man, was appointed, in 1828, travelling naturalist to the Jardin des Plantes in Paris, and was soon afterwards charged with a mission to India, the purpose of which was to collect for that celebrated institution objects of natural history, and to form geological and botanical collections. At that period the possessions of the East India Company were bounded on the north by the Chinese Empire, into which no foreigner was permitted to enter, and on the north-west by the Punjab, then an independent state. It was towards these comparatively unknown regions that Jacquemont directed his views. The difficulties of an expedition of this nature had discouraged some of the most enterprising
