October 14, 1893. 
THE GARDENING WORLD. 
101 
MR. PETER C. M. VEITCH. 
Mr. Peter Christian Massyn Veitch is a gentle¬ 
man ever energetic and active,and who never wearies 
in well-doing ; hence, when he was invited by the 
executive of the United Horticultural Benefit and 
Provident Society to take the chair at their annual 
dinner on Tuesday evening, at the Cannon Street 
Hotel, he at once accepted the good work, for such 
it really is, rather than the mere pleasure some 
might suppose it to be. Born at the Cape of Good 
Hope about forty years ago, he was, by his father, 
the late Mr. Robert Veitch, destined for the nursery 
business, for which he was accordingly educated. 
His home training was supplemented by experience 
gained in the seed house of Jacob \Vrench & Sons, 
in Germany and France, and by a sojourn of several 
years in the Chelsea establishment of his kinsman, 
Mr. H. J. Veitch, where he had opportunities of study¬ 
ing the various departments, and the exemplary busi¬ 
ness arrangements of that unique nursery business. 
In June, 1875, Mr. Peter 
Veitch made a voyage to 
Australasia in the inter¬ 
ests of the Chelsea firm, 
and after visiting the best 
botanical and other gar¬ 
dens and nurseries in 
Australia he sailed thence 
to Fiji, via Norfolk Island, 
where he saw the Palms 
and Araucarias and Ferns 
that there form such 
striking botanical features 
and which are also valu¬ 
able in our gardens at 
home. Here in the 
beautiful Fiji Islands, on 
a little lo-ton schooner, 
Mr. Veitch cruised from 
one island to another, 
being often delayed at 
barren spots along the 
coast by the captain 
waiting for cargo or by 
storms, and then sailing 
past rich bits of coast 
without so much as a 
chance of landing. Never¬ 
theless, collections were 
made, small in bulk but 
rich in novelties, and then 
to crown all, the ship that 
carried the spoils from 
these island gardens must 
needs go down at sea on 
its way tO Sydney, and 
thus the labour and 
anxiety of weeks and 
weeks were absolutely 
and irretrievably lost. 
From the Fijis, Mr. 
Veitch embarked for the 
South Sea Islands direct 
on board a'dabour vessel," 
or, as the colonists more 
frankly call such craft, "a 
slaver.” Here again the 
collector’s great difficulty 
of getting from one island to another was met with, 
and often an open whale boat had to be resorted to, 
with a native crew. Often the plants collected in 
one place could net be taken on to another, and had 
to be left in the care of people who knew but little 
about them, and, if possible, who cared still less! 
Even the ten or twelve cases of plants collected and 
sent on to Dunedin were nearly ruined by sea water 
during storms, or by being carefully shut down in 
the hold for days together. 
Leaving these islands of the Southern Sea, Mr. 
Veitch next visited the northern end of New 
Caledonia, sailing in a French vessel, the captain of 
which had but little sympathy with a plant collector, 
and threatened to put our friend into irons for having 
used a boat without his permission. This Mr. 
Veitch, of course, would not have done, only at the 
time alluded to the polite skipper was lying in his 
cabin mad with vermuth or something worse, having a 
cocked revolver in each hand, and swearing that he 
would shoot the first person who approached him. 
From New Caledonia, Mr. Veitch next went on a 
copper ship to Newcastle, and thence to Sydney, 
where on landing he learned the sad fate of his Fiji 
collections. No one who has not had experience of 
travel amongst tropical islands would believe the 
trouble and danger and annoyances that stand as 
thick as blackberries in the collector's path. Fore¬ 
seeing some of these troubles, Mr. Veitch applied 
for a berth on the Day Spring, the missionary ship, 
but that, unfortunately, was not granted to him, and 
he had not the opportunity of joining any of the gun¬ 
boats on the station. 
To add a climax to all other troubles and draw¬ 
backs, the ship Normandy, on which Mr, Veitch had 
taken a berth from Brisbane to New Guinea, must 
needs run on a sunken rock on the coast, inside the 
reefs above Rockhampton. She struck a sunken rock 
at ten o’clock at night, and running for the land, 
while the water is pouring into the hold like a young 
Niagara, is no joke. Fortunately, however, the cap¬ 
tain knew the coast, and ran full speed to Percy 
Island No. 2, where there is the only bit of sandy 
beach for hundreds of miles, and there the good ship 
Mr. P. C. M. Veitch. 
was most fortunately stranded. The captain was 
pretty sure of his being able to make land, but he 
was not so sure of his power to manage 100 desperate 
Chinamen aboard, who became frantic, and would 
have seized the boats had not a small army of eight 
or ten sturdy Englishmen, including our friend, Mr. 
Veitch. been enlisted and all armed with revolvers on 
the spur of the moment. As it happened, all ended 
well. The women and children were landed first, 
and after two days on Percy Island, signalling to 
passing ships, succour came. 
Altogether Mr. Veitch was absent from Europe 
about three years, during which time he visited 
Australia (Fiji and South Sea Islands), and New 
South Wales, Brisbane, Victoria, Melbourne, South 
Australia, Tasmania, and New Zealand, where he 
stayed from October, 1876. to July, 1877. After 
being shipwrecked, Mr. Veitch received dispatches 
from Chelsea advising his return to Europe, via 
Singapore and Borneo, where our old Chiswick 
friend, Mr. F. W. Burbidge (now curator of the 
Trinity College Botanic Gardens, Dublin), had gone 
in June, 1877, to make collections for the Chelsea 
firm. Arriving in Borneo in the autumn of 1877, a 
short voyage was made from Labuan to the beau¬ 
tiful Lawas river to see the habitats of Nepenthes 
bicalcarata, Burbidgea nitida, Cypripedium Law- 
renceanum, Pinanga Veitchii, and other treasures of 
that tropic land. 
After this excursion came more serious work, for 
the two travellers made arrangements to ascend 
Mount Kina Balu, in North-West Borneo, a moun¬ 
tain 13,700 ft. high, and six days’ journey from the 
coast, across swollen rivers without bridges, and 
altogether a difficult bit of country peopled by Dusun 
and Badjow tribes, who believe that the easiest and 
safest way to rob a man—especially a Chinaman—is 
to murder him. Low, Thos. Lobb, and Spencer St. 
John were the only travellers who had met these 
friendly natives on their native heath when Messrs. 
Burbidge and Veitch proposed to visit them. A posse 
of thirty men all told was taken, a third of them 
armed with rifles, and all carrying the native kris or 
the parang, a short kind of sword. As thus prepared 
and attended, the natives 
were civil, and the ascent 
of the mountain was suc¬ 
cessfully made and the 
two travellers saw all the 
splendid Nepenthes, such 
as N. Rajah, N. Edward- 
siana, N. villosa true 
[not N.lanata—N.Veitchii 
of gardens), N. Lowii, 
N. Boschiana, N. Harry- 
ana, N. Burbidgeae, and 
other rare plants, upland 
Rhododendra, and the 
stately Dipteris Ferns 
which have so far defied 
the skill of the European 
cultivator. Seeds, plants, 
and specimens of Ne¬ 
penthes, Orchids, Rhodo¬ 
dendra, and other shrubs 
were made, and after a 
brief rest in Labuan, 
varied by short excur¬ 
sions to neighbouring 
islands, Mr. Veitch re¬ 
turned to England with an 
extensive consignment of 
plants in Ward’s cases, 
and it was mainly through 
his unremitting care and 
attention that most of 
these reached Chelsea in 
good condition after pass¬ 
ing through that fiery 
furnace, the Red Sea, 
where so many of the 
lovely and rare upland 
plants of the Eastern 
tropics meet their doom. 
We have often heard 
Mr. Burbidge express his 
admiration and respect 
for his sometime fellow- 
traveller and explorer, 
Mr. P. C. M. Veitch. 
"Ah!” he said once to us, 
” you have no idea what 
a help he was to me in Borneo—always calm and 
gentle and firm, and in difficulty and danger he was 
just as staunch and true as a bar of steel! I am 
sure I should never have climbed Kina Ba'u the first 
time without him, and like the genuine fellow he was, 
when I reached Portsmouth on my return there he 
stood on the landing stage to meet and welcome me 
as he said ‘ Safe home ! ’ ” Those only who have, like 
Mr. Veitch, risked health and life itself in 
foreign lands can quite understand the full meaning 
of such simple words as " Safe home,” for to many 
of those who have collected for us such a welcome 
can never come ! 
Apart from assisting Mr. Burbidge in collecting 
and bringing home his plants, Mr. Veitch had also 
added very materially to the list of novelties and 
rarities since sent out from Chelsea. Thus that 
favourite stove Fern Microlepia hirta cristata was 
found and introduced by him from a garden in 
Sydney, and Lomaria discolor bipinnatifida was 
discovered above Melbourne. Croton Challenger, 
Lobelia (Pratia) angulata. Ranunculus Lyalli, 
Calanthe Petri, Spathogtottis Petri, and many rare 
