SOME FLOWERS OF EASTERN AND CENTRAL AFRICA. 



9 



In the last Christmas holidays we took a cart and horses again 

 and drove another way across Kaffraria to Kokstad, in East Griqua- 

 land, and then to the railway which is being extended across the 

 mountains from Natal. This was one of the most flowery districts 

 to which we have been. From Pietermaritzburg we went by train 

 through Ladysmith and Harrismith, and over Van Rienen's Pass to 

 Bloemfontein, and then to other parts of the Orange Free State, and 

 to Basutoland, paying visits all the time, and home to Umtata another 

 way, through Sterkstroom to Indwe. From Indwe we took another 

 cart, this time with mules, and drove back that way to Umtata. 



When I left South Africa I returned to Cape Town, and came home 

 by the East Coast in a German ship, stopping at Port Elizabeth, 

 East London, Lourenco Marques, Beira, Zanzibar, Tanga and Dar-es- 

 Salam, in German territory, and landed at Mombasa, whence I went up 

 into British East Africa, and across the Mau Mountains and Lake 

 Victoria Nyanza to Uganda, then back to Mombasa, where my 

 flower-hunting ended. I drew flowers, in water-colour and life 

 size, which I found at all the places or on all the journeys 

 mentioned. I had no previous intention of doing this, but was 

 tempted by the strange forms and wonderful colours to sketch them, 

 solely to show to my brothers and sisters in England. Thus I was 

 drawn on by first one and then another, till, all unintentionally, I 

 made a collection of four hundred paintings, which I have now 

 left, by will, to Kew.* 



My drawings were not intended to be pretty pictures, nor were 

 they meant to give minute botanical details, but simply to show 

 the flower as it grew, and alive. They were in fact reports. 

 I made also a large number of landscape sketches for the same 

 purpose. The drawings were not the object of my travels, but were 

 done amongst much other work and at all odd times, many when 

 on trek, many in shaky trains, and many on board ship — in books, 

 and generally on my knee. 



I have been three times to Cape Town and the neighbourhood, 

 at different times of the year, and for weeks at a time, but I have 

 drawn very few flowers there partly because I had too little time ; 

 and partly because the flowers of that region, the most beautiful 

 in the world, have been, and will be, drawn by others. I sketched 

 those that are less known in order to show them to those who could 

 not see them otherwise. 



I should be very sorry if anything I said tended to encourage the 

 wholesale importation of Cape bulbs. There is already far too much 

 destruction going on at the Cape, and it is much to be wished that 

 the regulations there for their protection should be made more stringent 

 and more efficiently enforced ; otherwise the time is not far distant 

 when some of the heaths and bulbous plants will be exterminated. 

 What is wanted is that they should be grown, cultivated, and increased 



* This itinerary was given in order to show the places in which the flowers 

 portrayed in the 100 water-colour sketches exhibited on the occasion grew. 



