Notes of a tour in the plains of India, the Himala, and Borneo: being extracts from the private letters of Dr. Hooker, written during a government botanical mission to those countries / [Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker].

  • Hooker, Joseph Dalton, 1817-1911.
Date:
1848-1849
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Notes of a tour in the plains of India, the Himala, and Borneo: being extracts from the private letters of Dr. Hooker, written during a government botanical mission to those countries / [Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Mango. If you have it not, in a living state, in the Royal Gardens, the Surgeon of this ship has kindly promised to procure it for you, on his way back to England.— [It has long been in the Royal Gardens of Kew.—Ed.] At Malta, I mean to enquire about the Cynomorium, and, if possible, to visit its habitat, which is* said to be on an insulated rock, sometimes impossible of access, about seventeen miles from the town of Yaletta. On board H.M. Steam Frigate, “ Sidon,” Off Valetta, Nov. 29th. We have had splendid views of the Spanish coast since quitting Gibraltar : the glorious Sierra Nevada has been full in sight, its purple mountains, capped with snow, darting upwards into the bluest of all blue skies, and rising from the bluest of seas. The African shore was very unlike what I expected. Instead of a bare, sandy, hilly desert, we saw rugged ranges, clothed in the lower part with trees, and surmounted with the snow-sprinkled heights of the Lesser Atlas. Algiers, from a distance, looked a pleasant enough place to live in:—the town stands on a high and steep point, rising out of the sea, faced with formidable white batteries and castled fortifications, and dotted all round with wood-embosomed villas, probably the residences of the Erench conquerors. The harbour of Yaletta is magnificent. In our way to the coaling place, we passed the town of St. Elmo on one hand, and a noble building, the Naval Hospital, on the other. The shores are rather high, presenting terrace after terrace of batteries, crowned with castellated buildings, and within these again are houses and palaces, public and private, parades and arched arcades (called Barracas) on the heights, where the inhabitants seat themselves and look down upon the shipping below. In all directions you see rows of huge cannon in the foreground, or bluff escarpments, or long lines of masonry, enclosing piles of buildings, sprinkled with churches and convents, and bell-towers innumerable. The latter emit an incessant jangling: some of the bells have good voices and others very bad. Scarcely a trace of vegetation remains anywhere, except the Caper plant, which covers the rocks and