This first difficulty removed, he began to prepare himself for the proper execution of the task he had undertaken, by the study of the Arabic and other oriental languages; and that he might not interrupt his academical studies, continued to be present at the public lectures, underwent the usual examinations, and maintained the requisite theses; so that, though absent, he might yet receive the honours to which his merit entitled him. Having in the spring of 1749 acquired the degree of licentiate, he proceeded to Stockholm, where he delivered a course of lectures in botany, which procured him the patronage of all the lovers of that science. The Levant Company, moreover, in consideration of his extraordinary merit, offered him a free passage to Smyrna on board of one of their ships.
His project having succeeded thus far almost beyond his hopes, he embarked on the 7th of August, 1749, at Stockholm, and sailed down the Baltic, landing at various points on the coast of Sweden for the purpose of examining the plants and other natural productions of the country. The voyage down the Baltic was attended with storms; but the pleasure imparted by the extraordinary features of the scenery, the sandy, columnar mountains of Gothland, the dazzling peaks of Iceland, and the gloomy beech forests of Malmo caused him to attend but little to the inconvenience they occasioned. In traversing the German Ocean and the English Channel, they approached so near our shores that the chalky cliffs and hills which run along the coast were visible; and on entering the Strait of Gibraltar, they discovered on the one hand the mountains of Africa, bare of vegetation, and looking like prodigious heaps of limestone, or moving sand; and on the other those of Spain, with cloud-capped summits, and lighted up at night by numerous watchfires and limekilns. The coasts of Sicily, of the Morea, of Candia were seen in passing, and on the 15th of September they came to an anchor in the harbour of Milo.
Though Hasselquist was by no means destitute of a relish for the beauties of nature, he was not precisely travelling in search of the picturesque. His affections were fixed upon those “children of the spring,” as flowers are termed by an old poet, which in the country where he now was long survive their parent; and was exceedingly delighted, on landing, to observe that numerous plants were still in flower, though others had already been deprived of their beauty by autumn. Among the former were the autumnal dandelion, the anemone coronaria, both white and blue, and the oleander, with a species of rhamnus with small white flowers.