INTRODUCTION. Xlll 



restored, though still sufiering from fever, Wehvitsch recom- 

 menced his explorations in another direction. His intention was 

 to investigate the littoral region of Benguella and Mos.samedes 

 only; but his travels, fortunately for science, extended over 

 a greater extent of country. After a short time passed at 

 Benguella, in lat. 12° 30' S., he proceeded by sea to Mossamedes 

 (Little Fish Bay, lat. 15° S.), where the magnificent climate 

 speedily re-invigorated him ; and he gradually extended his 

 journeys, first along the coast as far south as Cape Negro, the 

 port of Pinda, and the Bay of Tigers (lat. 17° S.), and afterwards, 

 as the spring (October) approached, inland to the elevated plateau 

 called Huilla, about eighty miles from the coast, which rises to 

 the height of from about 5800 to 6000 ft. above the sea-leveL 

 A short sketch of the vegetation of the coast region is given in 

 a published letter to Sir* William J. Hooker, dated the 16th 

 August 1860, after Welwitsch's return to Loanda. The remark- 

 able differences between its flora and that of Angola proper are 

 very striking even at Benguella, and at Mossamedes an entirely 

 new littoral vegetation appeared. Here he found "a motley 

 mixture of various floras, with a prevailing correspondence to 

 those of Senegambia and the Cape of Good Hope. ... At a 

 distance of a mile from the coast, however, the forms charac- 

 teristic of the Cape flora are lost ; the vegetation becomes with 

 every step richer in purely tropical forms, which are especially 

 developed on the banks of the Bero, in a variety one would never 

 have imagined in so apparently dry a coast region." Farther 

 south this dryness becomes more and more excessive, and the 

 flora poorer and poorer, chiefly consisting of Euphm'biai. As 

 Cape Negro (lat. 15° 40' S.) is approached, the coast rises to 

 form a perfectly level plateau of about 3000 or 4000 ft. in 

 height, and extending over six miles into the country, composed 

 of a calcareous tufa scattered over with loose sandstone-shingle. 

 The vegetation on this arid waste is scanty enough ; but it was 

 here that Welwitsch discovered that extraordinary plant which 

 has rendered his name familiar to every botanist, and on which 

 Sir Joseph Hooker based a remarkable memoir — the Welwitschia 

 mirahilis Hook. f. (= Tumhoa Bainesii Hook, f.) The sensations 

 of the enthusiastic discoverer, when he first realised the extra- 

 ordinary character of the plant he had found, were, as he has 

 said, so overwhelming that he could do nothing but kneel down 

 on the burning soil and gaze at it, half in fear lest a touch 

 should prove it a figment of the imagination. 



The vegetation of the highlands of Huilla, though bringing to 

 light no such wonder as the Tumhoa, produced quite as strong an 

 impression on the mind of the traveller. Welwitsch started from 

 Mossamedes on the 10th October 1859, and following the banks 

 of the river Maiombo reached Bumbo, on the slopes of Serra da 

 Chella, and crossing that chain at a height of 4200 ft., at the 

 end of that month found himself on the tableland. " The entire 

 appearance of the landscape, the aspect of forest and plain — 



