8 JOURNAL OF THE ROY AT. HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



SOME FLOWERS OF EASTERN AND CENTRAL AFRICA. 



By Miss M. H. Mason, F.R.H.S. 



[Read February n, 1913 ; Dr. A. B. Rendle, F.R.S., in the chair.] 



This sketch is intended to be neither botanical nor horticultural, 

 but simply descriptive of the flowers as they grew wild, in their 

 own homes. 



Interesting as is botany, and delightful as are gardens, nothing, 

 to me, comes up to the joy of nature itself, and of finding flowers 

 growing wild in country which has never been cultivated, and especially 

 if it has never been visited, or scarcely, by white people. 



In September 1910 I went to South Africa to visit one of 

 my brothers, who had been for four years Principal of St. Bede's 

 College, Umtata, Tembuland. St. Bede's College is for the training 

 of native clergy ; Umtata is the capital of the Transkei ; and the 

 Transkei, or Transkeian Native Territories, or Kaffraria, is a native 

 reserve lying between Cape Colony, Natal, and Basutoland and the 

 Drakensberg. It is a country very little known, and I have described 

 it in an article in the Nineteenth Century for March 1913. 



Its coast border is Pondoland, and its one small port is Port St. 

 John's, at the mouth of the Uzimvubu River — one of the most beautiful 

 places in the world, and possessing one of the most beautiful floras. 



In my brother's college vacations we made many journeys together. 

 The first Christmas we took a Cape cart and horses, and drove 

 400 miles over the most remote parts of the Transkei. Our journeys 

 were made in connexion with the work of the college, but they took 

 us to out-of-the-way places, where the flowers were both beautiful 

 and little known. And as we travelled by our own cart we were able 

 to stop whenever we pleased and secure flowers, seeds, or roots. 

 Moreover, we walked up all the steep hills to save the horses, and 

 gathered by the way. 



Twice besides I have been to the Ngadu Forest, in the Transkei, 

 for a week at a time. 



Besides making other short visits in the Transkei, we stayed some 

 time at Port St. John's. In the winter vacation — July and 

 August— we went down to East London, and from there by sea 

 to Durban and the Natal coast. From there again by sea to Lourenco 

 Marques and Beira, and thence by rail through Portuguese East Africa to 

 Umtali and Penhalongha, in Mashonaland. We went on to Rhodesia — 

 Salisbury, Buluwayo, the Matoppos — the Victoria Falls, and Living- 

 stone, and a little way up the Zambesi. We returned by Bechuana- 

 land and Johannesburg to Durban, and from there home the same 

 way to Umtata. At all these places, and wherever the train stopped, 

 we got flowers, and I drew them. 



