944. DR. HOOKER’S MISSION TO INDIA. 
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.—Ep.] 
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 Valetta. 
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 French conquerors. 
The harbour of Valetta is magnificent. In our way to the 
coaling place, we passed the town of St. Elmo on one hand, and à 
noble building, the Naval Hospital, on the other. The shores are 
rather high, presenting terrace after terrace of batteries, € 
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, sprink 
with churches and convents, and bell-towers innumerable. 
latter emit an incessant jangling: some of the bells have good 
voices and others very bad. Scarcely a trace of vegetation remain? 
anywhere, except the Caper plant, which covers the rocks 
