REMINISCENCES OF A VOYAGE TO AND FROM CHINA. 101 
and did the proprietor considerable service, for which he amply 
rewarded us. 
Returning to Madras, we were immediately ordered on board ship. 
A great change had taken place. The Governor-General Cornwallis 
had determined to attack the French settlement of Pondicherry. 
General Braithwaite was ordered to invest it with troops by land, 
while our ship and two other Indiamen which had arrived out after us, 
were taken up and fitted out as frigates to form the blockade of the 
place. We were put under the orders of Rear-Admiral Cornwallis, 
who then commanded the Minerva frigate, the only British ship of 
war then on the Indian station. This was an arduous though not a 
dangerous duty for the crews of the blockading ships. Preventing 
supplies intended for the place was mostly night work; but no 
resistance was offered to our boats in the performance of the duty of 
seizing an unarmed open boat, loaded with a few buffaloes and a few 
bags of rice. 
After lying before the place for a week or ten days, in which time 
we saw all the operations and some of the calamities of a regular siege, 
the Triton was suddenly ordered away to Calcutta to escort the 
Governor-General to the seat of war. We were soon at anchor in the 
mighty Ganges, and lay at Kedgeree until the Marquis and suite 
embarked in two other ships, and joining us, we all three returned 
first to Madras again, and next day to our station before Pondicherry. 
The place in a week afterward capitulated, and the British flag floated 
over the captured town. 
After this event we were set at liberty to prosecute our voyage ; and 
at last sailed from Madras in company with the Royal Charlotte, Capt. 
Price, and Warley, Capt. H, Wilson, all bound to China. 
The reader will excuse this rambling account of the movements of 
the ship, instead of details of the botanical discoveries we made, which 
is the more immediate purpose of our narrative, but we cannot do the 
one well without introducing somewhat of the other. We have a 
list of the names of plants we met with in Hindustan now before us, 
but which we think unnecessary to transcribe, not only because it 
would take up too much space, but also because it would only be a 
transcript of a great majority of stove plants which may be seen in 
any exotic nurseryman’s catalogue. We shall, however, select a few, 
not for their novelty, as they have been long in British collections, but 
because we consider them among the most splendid flowering plants of 
that part of India ; and which, moreover, might be cultivated to greater 
perfection in this country than they have heretofore been. These are 
as follow :■— 
