JOUKNAL AND LETTEES 87 
copies of them, are faithfully preserved, bound in a large quarto 
volume. His letters home were generally transcribed by 
the willing hand of his mother — who frequently Johnsonised 
the style to her own hking — for distribution among friends 
and relations, official news being of the scantiest, while letters, 
to these others, were regularly sent to her to copy. This sohdly 
bound volume contains fifty-two autograph letters, ranging 
from four to twenty-seven closely written quarto sheets in a 
minute hand, twenty-nine in copy only, and twenty-seven 
duplicates which had returned in course of time to Kew. A 
still larger companion volume contains 234 letters received by 
him during this period. 
So much of this abundant material may be cited as will 
suffice to show the impression made upon his mind by new 
scenes and new ideas, his occasional jaunts, more and more 
coloured by his scientific objects, a few sketches of the people 
with whom he came in contact, a passage or two to show his 
sensitiveness to Nature, and his power of describing what he 
saw. 
At Madeira, as ever and again on his travels, his eye is 
instantly caught by any hkeness to his beloved Highlands, 
whose beauty had sunk deep into his mind from his earhest 
days. Equally he recalls the pictures of the same scenes 
in the books of travel so well known to himself and to his 
father. ^ 
On first nearing Madeira, I was strongly reminded of 
some of the islands on the West of Argyllshire, only the 
volcanic rocks are much redder, and clothed here and there 
with low brushwood ; the tops of the hills are often capped 
with pines. 
The ravines are quite hke Scotch ones, but more sparingly 
wooded, and the faces of the very deep ravines are most 
admirably like the view in Webb and Berthelot, full of 
vertical perpendicular lines which are dotted with trees. 
These views came into my mind directly I saw the 
realities. 
With the botanist's eye he notes for his father the botanist, 
the belt of chestnuts running halfway up the mountains : * the 
