H.M.S. Erebus, Hobart Town

[[1]]*1

Nov[ember] 3d, 1840.

My dear Father

The receipt of your three letters or rather envelopes yesterday afternoon gave me the greatest pleasure & I cannot thank you too much for the very kind manner in which you expressed your candid opinion of my collections. I did not expect they would please you, though when I made them I thought I was doing well. I have no excuse to plead but the novelty of my situation in every aspect & the bewilderment of my first visiting a new country the more I think of them the more I see their faults & though I then hardly knew how to do them better, I find now that I can do better & I feel confident that the collection I am now leaving with Mr. Gunn*2 for transmission home will if it does not come up to your full expectations, at least show you that I am improving & that better may await you. Since arriving here nothing but Botany has engaged my attention, I have carefully eschewed all society but Government House (a stupid place. I feel forced to go sometimes) and Mr. Gunn's delightful fireside saving these two houses I have been to no ball or party, but one given to the officers of the ships and as that did not commence till long after dark I was collecting on the same day & laid out my collections too. Had the season been later many more species would have been added but summer is only now setting in, & what I have gathered are all spring plants. The snow has but just left the tops of the mountains & as the warm weather is commencing plants begin to shoot in extraordinary numbers. As you recommended I have followed Mr. Gunn's advice in every respect; he has been my most kind friend especially in what parts of the Island would prove most productive, he has been my most kind friend in every respect, & has put me in the way of doing much more than I otherwise should have. Still the Western tier have not been visited by me, & I fear you will be disappointed, they are still covered with snow & at this season an excursion to them would be profittless. I am not I assure you at all afraid of difficulties that I might encounter to reach them, nor would I grudge any expense if it were only to gratify you & get nothing

[[2]] but Mr. Gunn says it is totally out of the question & often as I have seen that fine range, they were always covered for half up way up with snow. All the interior of this Island is so elevated as to be at least two months behind the other parts, but rather than that you should think that I attempted nothing, I went to Lake Echo in the centre of the Island much against Mr. Gunn's advice, I got a few things, but the common silver Wattle (Acacia mollissima) that was in full bloom on our first arrival in the colony was there only bursting into bud. For about 60 miles of the way there is a good road but after that the land ascends over successive tiers of hills & then there is a nice horse track through the woods & morasses to Marlbro' where there are three stock keepers huts in one of which I lived for three days, it was very cold & rained the whole time--all my things were carried on my horses & the men's backs both there & back again from within 20 miles of Hobart Town. From Marlbro I went to Lake Echo, a most beautiful but very wild spot about 3000 feet above the Sea. The country I passed through for 50 miles in the interior was dreary in the extreme. [I]t is a vast elevated table land of marshes covered with long grass & successive low tiers of undulating hills, densely clothed with dead timber of immense size all Eucalypti killed for many hundred square miles by a frost in 1837. The track ran across these marshes & wound among the trees which are notched where the pathway was obliterated. The spot where I staid[sic] is characteristic of the whole it is a broad valley 1 mile across & 6 long, its bottom is a huge marsh & the low hills on all sides are thickly covered with dead trees looking quite white like a forest of gigantic birch in winter. Many of the trees are unexceptionably killed more than a century or two old but all near the marshes are unexceptionably[sic] killed, on the tops of the hills a few survive but only those in such situation & they were a sad few--most of them were sprouting from the sides of the trunks which being tall & straight they looked like huge hop poles. On the top of one tier I passed a whole forest of such hop poles where the contrast between the white green & black (where the previous fires of the natives had charred the trunks) was most remarkable. The under growth? of Leptosperma[,]Bedfordia[,] Fagus Cunninghamii &c had shared the same fate & generally nothing but the bare rock or stark grays remained. On the very high hills the wood was all alive & very dense the same in the case on the most elevated marshes, where I gathered the Cyder[sic] Tree a species of Eucalyptus which is in immense abundance in one spot of several square miles

[[3]] but does not produce the fluid for which it is tapped at this season, nor has it well since 1837. At that time Lake Echo was completely frozen for 6 week's of & the snow lay 5 feet thick, hundreds of kangaroos were killed in short all nature suffered.

The most remarkable circumstance connected with it is, that it was most severely felt at the foot of the hills & on the low tiers near the marshes where a hill of 1000 feet above the level across its top is seen to be green & so are those near marshes at that height that is about 4000 ft. above the sea & perhaps upwards. Finding every thing here so backward, I returned to the lower grounds in a S[outh] W[est] direction to Hamilton & from there about 10 miles up the [River] Derwent to Cheny[?], a Mr. Naylor's estate (a clergyman) his house is beautifully situated on the banks of the river & is the Ultima Thule of civilization in this direction, being about 60 miles from Hobart Town. The river here is carried wide & deep but very rapid, its banks are covered with the Phebalium retusum[,] Pleurandras[,] Eurybias & a vast number of most beautiful flowering shrubs from thence where I staid[sic] a day I went about 10 miles up the Derwent to the cataracts, here it is about the size of the Tay at Dochart at Killin running between high hills, covered densely with wood, so densely that it is inseparable for any but an experienced bush--hand to find the way out if the river become lost. Kangaroo of the bush kind were very abundant. Several new plants (to me) appeared here, as a beautiful Gleichenia--Sprengelia, some Eucalypti--Acacia & some others. From Mr. Naylor's I returned to Hobart Town by the banks of the river the whole way. Mr. Gunn expresses himself very pleased with what I got & had the season been late on the high lands I feel sure that many good things would turn up. As it was, I collected as much as I could carry & get carried for me.

It is known chiefly among the Gum trees that there is much novelty as I have increased the genus to about 93 V[an].D[iemen's].L[and]. species which would make a fine monograph. I have also several new Crucifera & a new Cryptandra but nothing to boast of. My notes I kept up as well as I could in a little work book, among the Orchidae chiefly I have done this. Are you aware of a circumstance that Mr. Gunn pointed out to me, that the labella of nearly all the Pterostylides[sic] are irritable, they naturally hand down, but on being touched spring up with elastic force on the face of the column. The sketches of Kerguelen's Land plants are not yet finished or I s[hou]ld ere this have sent them home but I have had no time to attend to them here. I do not like sending them without keeping duplicates for fear of accidents alone. I shall write again ere we sail, at present I can say no more.

Believe me y[ou]r most afft.[affectionate] son | Jos D Hooker [signature]

[[4]] Sir W[illia]m J[ackson] Hooker | Glasgow

ENDNOTES

1. This letter is a contemporary 19th century copy, not written in the hand of the original author Joseph Dalton Hooker, and not signed by him. The copy was probably made by Hooker's Mother or one of his sisters to be circulated amongst family and friends.

2. Ronald Campbell Gunn, South African--born Australian botanist and politician.

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