1879/ March 26th 



Fort of Spain, Trinidad, W, I. TRANSLATION 



Port of Spain, Island of Trinidad West 

 Indies, March 26th, 1&79. 



Dear Doctor, 



With sincere regret and deep sympathy we are reading (I, as well as my toother) 

 your letter of February 27th in- which you informed us of hard fate you have suffered 

 lately and I can well imagine how very much it must hurt you to have Iiost your dear, 

 faithful life companion. I hope that the hand of your son will heal better than you 

 think and also that your health will be improved in the meantime, so that you can 

 still count on a long and fruitful life. It must be a comfort to you that you are 

 surrounded by many admirers and friends and that you enjoy all the comforts a human 

 being craves. But what can I say about myself? ' -tendering around in a strange country' 

 at my old age, living among people of a race which are enemies of the white man, 

 cunning and living in crudest sensuality. Instead of resting from all the hard work 

 in my lifetime, always having moved around, I still have to climb mountains, rocks 

 and abysses, make long trips on foot under the strong sun and often soaked by dew 

 and rain to be happy to find in the evening in the woods a lonely roof consisting of 

 leaves to spend the night. Add to all this the mockery and contempt of the rude t 

 ignorant people who think of an honest collector often as a crazy man, a magician or 

 even a thief. The only thing that makes life bearable here is the mild climate which 

 is good for my health, the beautiful plant world and the desire to took in new places 

 for plants which I consider rarities. But what will by future be when finally the 

 number of species valuable to collectors has been reduced to a minimum? In our 

 garden we find some things to live on as far as fruit and vegetables are concerned, 

 but the expenses for cloths etc. are still to high for our income. 



One of our orange trees brought this year 1027 oranges which we almost all ate 

 ourselves, from September until now. However, one can count on such a good crop only 

 every two years. Qn July 51st, 1878 I broke off a 6" long branch of an old cut-down 

 cactus, almost rotteni? and put it into the ground. Heven months later, it showed the 

 first signs of life and now (5 1/2 weeks later) Stippled new sprouts measuring 1 1/2" 

 in height and 2 1/2" in diameter appeared. In February, we felt a small tremor of an 

 earthquake. The last summer (rainy season) we did not have as much rain as usual 

 and this year f s dry season is not as dry as the one in 1878. The breadfruit tree 

 delivered many fruits for us for some time. The Mango tree was in bloom two weeks ago. 

 Bananas and plantains developed blossoms and we enjoyed their fruit after *f-5 weeks. 



My healt is not too bad now, and I made a long trip into the interior on foot 

 lately without getting too tired, ten miles there and ten miles back between 8 o'clock 



