Travels to Oaxaca

Botanical Piracy! A French botanist plots to steal red dye cochineal insects from Spanish Mexico and transplant them and their cacti hosts to the French Caribbean. The year is 1776. Nicolas-Joseph Thiéry de Menonville is a fast talker and a quick thinker. Botanist and physician by training, he insinuates his way from Port-au-Prince, first to Havana and then to the Mexican mainland on the ruse that he is searching for a botanical cure for gout. In Vera Cruz, however, his passport is confiscated, and the Viceroy orders him to leave Mexico on the first available ship. There are three weeks to wait before the ship sails. Thiéry de Menonville concocts a daring plan. Circulating the story that he is spending the interval before his departure at the country estate of an alluring widow, he instead climbs over the city wall of Vera Cruz in the dead of night and sets out on foot for Oaxaca and its cochineal plantations, no matter that he is ignorant of the exact route to take. Not daunted, he stops at a monastery and tells the monks he has made a vow to walk on foot to Nuestra Señora de la Soledad in Oaxaca, and the monks point him on the right road. How Thiéry de Menonville succeeds in bringing living cactus and cochineal insects to the French colony of Saint-Domingue is a non-stop adventure tale.

By : Nicolas-Joseph Thiéry de Menonville (1739 - 1780)

01 - A Plot is Laid; Arrival at Havana 02 - Havana - Life and Times 03 - Obtains a Passport to Visit Veracruz 04 - Provincial Society at Veracruz 05 - Veracruz - City and Fortifications 06 - Birds, Insect Bites, and Gossip Aplenty 07 - Ordered to Leave Mexico; A Desperate Plan 08 - Sets Out, Illegally, for Oaxaca on Foot 09 - Reaches Orizaba; Visits a Monastery; A Temptation of the Flesh 10 - Tehuacan; Negro and Indian Labor; Turtles; Pulque; Offended Pride 11 - Tehuacan to Oaxaca: San Sebastian, Los Cues, Quiotepec, Cuicatlan 12 - Sees First Cochineal Plantations 13 - Arrives in Oaxaca: Secures Cochineal and Vanilla 14 - Starts Back to the Coast 15 - Praise for Native Justice; A Customs Inspection 16 - Animosity Between Blacks and Indians 17 - Safely Back at Veracruz with the Cochineal 18 - 8 June 1777 Sails from Veracruz with Stolen Cochineal 19 - A Stop at Campeachy; Dyewood Smuggling 20 - Dissects a Porpoise and 2 Sharks 21 - A Mix-Up with the American Revolution: Encounter with the Ship "Boston" 22 - Lands Cochineal at Saint-Domingue; Offers Sophistic Defense of Botanical Piracy