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the most essential and valuable qualifications for his employment , and having left on record , when " upon or near the spot , " and in a manner eminently simple and faithful , the results of his individual observation . He was born January 3 , 1722 , in the province of East Gothland . From his parents he inherited no worldly advantages . While he was very young * , he lost his father , a meanly beneficed clergyman . His mother laboured under weakness of body and of mind , and was provided for by public
chanty . The maternal uncle of Hasselquist kindly sent him to school ; this advantage , however , could not be long enjoyed ; and the orphan youth was constrained to acquire the means of subsistence by instructing persons still younger than himself . In 1741 , he went to the University of Upsal , where he found a slender maintenance in the same way , and had the benefit of attending the public lectures . Medicine and Natural History soon became his favourite studies , which he pursued with great success , under professional and royal
patronage . In the class-room of the celebrated Linnseus his destiny was fixed . That eminent teacher of botany , having enumerated the countries , with the native productions of which the learned world was acquainted , and those of which it is ignorant , expatiated on the importance of a naturalist ' s personal visit to Palestine , and declared his concern and wonder that it had never
been traversed by an individual at once disposed and competent to describe its characteristic appearances , in the animal , vegetable , and mineral kingdoms . From that moment Hasselquist felt an inextinguishable desire of going to the Holy Land , tn despite of his poverty , of his infirm bodily heajth , antf even of the friendly remonstrances of Linnseus , he determined on the experiment .
Contributions were raised among his countrymen for his journey : individuals * and public bodies gave substantial proofs of be ^ ng friendly to his design ; and from the medical facutyy ^ in particular , he received various aids for tfye gratification of his wishes . Having finished his academical studies , and gained some knowledge of the Arabic tongue and of other Eastern languages , and having accepted an offer , from the Levant Company , of a free passage \ o Smyrna ^ he sailed from Stockholm in the beginning of August , 1749 .
It was not until November 26 that he completed h . is voyage * . At Smyrna he was hospitably welcomed , and materially assisted , by Hydelius the Swedish Consul ; and he passed the winder there ; carefully marking the appearances and productions of nature in that vicinity . During the early part of tbe following spring he travelled to Magnesia , in Natolia , and collected plants on Mount Sipfyylus ; *| - which is one of the loftiest hijl ^ in Asia , and covered . wit , h perpetual snows ,.
Egypt was the next object of his attention . In May , 1750 , he left Smyrna , and proceeded , by the route of Alexandria and , K-Qsetta , to Cairo , wjnere he continued Ipr yearly twelve months . He now visaed the Pyramids , descended in ^ o , the sepulchres o ^ the M umxa ies , watched the rising and falling of the Nile , and , with a care and industry of which there had been no previous example , brought together the rarest pr ^ cjucts of t ^ e country . To his scientific friends in Sweden he communicated the result of bis observations and experiments . Nor were his zeal , success , and ready disclosures ,
* Life of Linnaeus , &c , Lond . 1794 , pp . 171 , 175 . t Piin . Nat . Hist . IL § 91 .
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218 Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Frederick Hasselquist .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), April 2, 1830, page 218, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2583/page/2/
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