The "M. de T." of this episode was Constantine Samuel Rafinesque, in many respects the most singular figure that has ever appeared in the annals of American science. Although young in years, for Rafinesque was then but thirty-five, he was already old in experience and that of the bitterest sort; and although already known to many in both hemispheres, he had few friends. It is certain that neither Audubon nor anyone else in that part of Kentucky had ever heard of him before. Born in Constantinople, of a father who was a French merchant from Marseilles and of a mother with a German name who by nativity was Greek, Rafinesque had known life in many lands, and was destined, as he said, to be a traveler from the cradle to the tomb.[264] His first voyage, made with his parents on their return to France, by way of Scutari in Asia, Smyrna, and Malta, led to his first discovery, when he was a year old, for he was able to announce that "infants are not subject to sea-sickness." At eleven he read Latin and collected plants; at thirteen he wrote his first scientific paper, "Notes on the Apennines," which he had seen when traveling from Leghorn to Genoa. His father, who set out for China in 1791, fell in with pirates, but managed to reach America; he died of the yellow fever in Philadelphia in 1793. To escape the Reign of Terror in France, Rafinesque's mother fled with her children to Italy, where four years were passed at Leghorn. There Constantine studied with private tutors, but his education was never formal and he was allowed to follow his omnivorous tastes, reading, as he said, ten times more than was taught in the schools. His writings are mainly in French, Italian, and English, and his facility with languages was no doubt remarkable, even if we discount his egotized estimate of his own attainments: "I have undertaken to read the Latin and Greek, as well as the Hebrew, Sanskrit, Chinese, and fifty other languages, as I felt the need or inclination to study them."