XIV INTRODUCTION. 



indeed, the whole character of the vegetation, was at once and 

 entirely changed as though by magic. I fancied myself in a 

 strange world. Everything about me would recall the delightful 

 outlying mountains of Switzerland, did not numerous Melasto- 

 macese, Apocynacese, Combretaceje, etc., remind me of the tropics." 

 The intermingling of tropical, Cape, and European forms is indeed 

 very striking in the extensive and beautiful flora of this moun- 

 tainous country, watered with innumerable streams running to 

 the south to join the Cacolovar, which flows into the Cunene, and 

 covered with pasture lands always green and fresh ; and the seven 

 months spent in the district produced a very large addition to 

 the flora of West Tropical Africa. An interesting account of 

 the botany of Huilla, which bears a strong similarity to that of 

 Abyssinia, is given in a letter to Alphonse de Candolle, dated 

 20th April 1861, written after Welwitsch's return to Portugal. 

 Over 2000 specimens were collected in the province of Benguella, 

 but his investigations in this attractive country were uncere- 

 moniously put to an end by a native war. The little colony of 

 Lopollo in Huilla, founded about three yeai's previously, was 

 attacked by a large force of Munanos to the number of 15,000. 

 They held it closely blockaded for two months, during which the 

 little garrison, of which Welwitsch was a member, kept them 

 bravely at bay, until at length they gave up the siege and con- 

 tented themselves with carrying off all the flocks they could 

 find and dispersing among the mountains. After this Welwitsch 

 recrossed the Serra da Chella, and returned to Mossamedes and 

 Loanda, whence, wounded and stricken with fever and dysentery, 

 he embarked for Lisbon with his immense collections, arriving in 

 the Tagus at the end of January 1861. His herbarium is un- 

 doubtedly the best and most extensive ever collected in Tropical 

 Africa, whether regard be had to the intrinsic interest of the plants 

 themselves, the care and judgment displayed in their selection and 

 preservation, or the extent of the collection both in number of 

 species and series of specimens, the intention being that the study 

 set especially might illustrate so far as possible the various states 

 and conditions of each species. He was in the habit of (in most 

 cases) carefully describing their essential characters when gathered, 

 so that his tickets convey an amount of information scarcely ever 

 to be found in other collections. 



On his return to Lisbon he was placed on Government com- 

 mittees for the improvement of cotton cultivation in Angola, and 

 for the classification of the products of the Portuguese colonies to 

 be forwarded to the London Great Exhibition of 1862. In con- 

 nection with the latter purpose he printed in the Medical Gazette 

 of Lisbon in 1862 a collection of notes on the 149 specimens of 

 woods, drugs, and other objects from Angola, which he had 

 selected for the International Exhibition ; these notes were sub- 

 sequently published as a separate edition, with some editorial 

 alterations, under the title of " Synopse explicativa das amosti-as 

 de Madeiras e Drogas medicinaes, etc." A gold medal was 



