Ixxvi Appendix. 
be superb plants in a stove, and I hope T may succeed in sending them alive to 
England, as this is the only way by which you will be able to see them, it 
being quite impossible to dry specimens; they will rot in spite of anything that 
can be done. I am very sorry I never thought of taking some bottles of 
spirit up the mountains with me to put them in, or of writing descriptions of 
them on the spot. There is also growing here another very large-leaved plant, 
which I at first took for another Cyrtandra ; it, however, turned out to be a 
Cinchoniaceous plant, with enormous deciduous stipules and thick downy 
flowers three inches long, which I never found but once. 
One great disadvantage of going alone on these expeditions was that I 
could not carry any paper with me, and by the time I returned to Papeite the 
greater portion of my large specimens of ferns was spoiled by the heat, or by 
having been crammed too hard into my tin box; and as I had but very little 
time to spare, and it was very difficult to get any person to do anything out of 
the ordinary way, I never could manage to find time to make any kind of 
straps for carrying a portfolio on my shoulders, and it would have been quite 
beyond my powers to have carried it any other way up the Tahitian 
mountains, 
In coming back I lost my way, in consequence of overlooking the proper 
place for descending from the main ridge to the watering place I have spoken 
of. I found out my error in time to have rectified it if I had pleased, but 
knowing that I was on a ridge which must lead down to the Vallée de la 
Reine, which I was perfectly acquainted with, I thought I would try if it 
might not be an easier road than the one by which I came. I had, however, 
abundant occasion to repent of my temerity, for when I arrived at the end of 
the high part of the ridge, and had descended a long slope of earth which it 
was impossible to think of climbing again, I found myself cut off from the 
valley by a precipice, which I was obliged to skirt for about a mile, through long 
grass which cut my face and hands, and bind-weeds which constantly tripped 
me up, over logs and stones, momentarily in danger of falling over the face of 
the cliff, which, after all, was only about 50 feet high. I at length found a 
break in the rock through which I managed to slip, and the rest of the way down 
to the valley, although it was over loose stones over which 1 was obliged to 
make my way in a sitting posture for fear of falling, was comparatively easy. 
Tf it had not been raining a deluge the whole time not one of my specimens 
would have been worth anything by the time I got to Papeite; they would 
have been dry ; as it was they were terribly bruised and torn, and, of course, 
many lost. Another time I lost my whole day's work through missing my 
way in a valley at the commencement of my journey in the dark, and trying | 
to recover myself by climbing the side of a hill covered with fern (Gleichenia), 
which turned out to be so strong and high that, although I had not above 
