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 Wyeth during a journey overland to Oregon. With interest in the far Northwest thus quickened, Nuttall joined Wyeth when he set out on a second expedition, resigning his position at Harvard when the college authorities refused to grant a leave of absence. He was accompanied by John K. Townsend, as representative of the Philosophical Society and the Academy of Natural Sciences. The party rendezvoused at Independence, Missouri, and began the long march on April 28, 1834. Nuttall and Townsend passed the autumn exploring the environs of Fort Vancouver; but as winter drew near, they embarked on a Boston brig bound for the Sandwich Islands, where they arrived January 5, 1835. Two months later, leaving Townsend, Nuttall sailed to the California coast, where he passed the summer, returning thence to the Sandwich Islands and embarking for Boston by way of Cape Horn, on board the vessel whose cruise has been made famous by Dana's Two Years before the Mast.

Upon reaching the United States, Nuttall resumed his abode in Philadelphia. In 1840, the results of the Pacific journey were published in the Transactions of the Philosophical Society, in the form of two long essays, entitled: "Descriptions of new species and genera of plants in the natural order Compositæ, collected in a tour across the continent to the Pacific, a residence in Oregon, and a visit to the Sandwich Islands and California, in the years 1834 and 1835;" and "Description and notices of new and rare plants of the natural orders Lobeliaceæ, Campanulaceæ, Vacciniceæ and Ericaceæ, collected in a journey across the continent of North America, and during a visit to the Sandwich Islands and Upper California."