xvi LETTERS OF WILLIAM GRIFFITH. 



beautiful species, well worthy a place in every border." All your 

 plates are improved, especially the uncoloured ones. How Bengal 

 ought to blush for her Botanists. When I commence getting thro' 

 a catalogue of the species I have collected, I shall hang up in my 

 room a huge placard. Be grateful to Robt. Wight ! Every plate of 

 yours is a guide to act upon. Dr. Wallich did real service when he • 

 placed, at your disposal a copy of Roxburghs drawings. You will 

 have the satisfaction of a pleasant retrospect when you turn back 

 to review your career in India : you will then have the just satis- 

 faction of remembering the vast difficulties you have overcome, both 

 for yourself and others. I admire Lord A's minute, which contains 

 much that is clear and comprehensive, but I don't approve of the neg- 

 lect of India cottons, at least in Bombay. I may be wrong, but it 

 appears to me a much simpler thing to improve an indigenous 

 article, than to substitute a foreign one, unless we have mastered 

 all the details, which in this side of India have been quite over- 

 looked. 



I wish I was quit of this country : I have had one narrow escape 

 from a set of robbers, who are always murderers; it is impossible to 

 go a mile in any direction in perfect safety, every one of the hill 

 people is a thief and a rebel, and as it is a hilly country, you may 

 guess the proportion they bear to the peaceble subjects. I came here 

 with a political agent and enjoyed every advantage : he has returned, 

 I stayed behind, as the mountains are within reach, and well wooded, 

 containing a Quercus, and an Olea? below, with pines above. The 

 inhabitants are Kafiris, described as the descendants of Alexander 

 the Great, and said to be the most romantic people in the world. How 

 degenerate they have since become you will understand, wheu I assure 

 you they now turn out to be nothing more than the usual hill savages : 

 eat raw meat etc. Yet how different these people are from the usual 

 Affghans. I have now before me two rupees worth of Pinus ex- 

 celsa, some grand chesnut seed, and the kafirs are to bring specimens 

 of other things in a day or two. I might have waited here a year 

 before an AfFghan would have brought me a single plant. I hope 

 to get some information or the vegetation of the frontier of Ka- 

 fristhan, which from being wooded is in great contras with the 

 usual run of Affghan Mountains. After all, the flora is desidedly 

 poor, and I doubt much whether the huge kingdom of Khorasan 



