Travels to Oaxaca
Author: first_name: Nicolas-Joseph 
last_name: Thiéry de Menonville
Language: English
Year: 1812

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 confiscat