Title: Early New Zealand Botanical Art

Author: F. Bruce Sampson

Publication details: Reed Methuen, 1985, Auckland

Digital publication kindly authorised by: F. Bruce Sampson

Part of: New Zealand Texts Collection

Conditions of use

Share:

Other formats

    Adobe Portable Document Format file (facsimile images)   TEI XML file   ePub eBook file  

Connect

    mail icontwitter iconBlogspot iconrss icon

Early New Zealand Botanical Art

The eleven-month journey to Tasmania and from there to the Great Ice Barrier

The eleven-month journey to Tasmania and from there to the Great Ice Barrier

There were stops at various islands including Madeira, the first port-of-call, then a nine-week stay at the Cape of Good Hope and on to Kerguelen Island for a nine-week stay. Joseph Hooker studied its flora intensively and increased the number of plants known there to 150, which included lichens and seaweeds. The expedition made good use of the Kerguelen "cabbage", Pringlea antiscorbutica, which Cook had found to be effective in preventing scurvy. It was abundant there and was used as the sole vegetable for the crew for four months. Joseph Hooker's Flora Antarctica contains the first published description of the Kerguelen cabbage, which, like the true cabbage, Brassica oleracea, is in the family Cruciferae. From Kerguelen Island to Tasmania they encountered atrocious weather, and one of the crew was swept overboard. After a three-month stay in Tasmania, where Joseph learnt that his brother William, a doctor, had died of yellow fever in Jamaica, the ships headed south. They visited Auckland Island, which Joseph had time to thoroughly botanise, and then made a brief call at Campbell Island. Finally, they reached Victoria Land in Antarctica and located the precise bearing of the South Magnetic Pole (160 miles inland). They discovered Mt Erebus (3,798 metres) on the fringes of what is now the Ross Sea. As Joseph wrote to his father:

To see the dark cloud of smoke tinged with flame rising from the volcano in one column, one side jet black and the other reflecting the colors [sic] of the sun, turning off at a right angle by some current of wind and extending many miles to leeward; it is a sight far exceeding anything I could imagine and which is very much heightened by the idea that we have penetrated far farther page 75 than was once thought practicable, and there is a sort of awe that steels over us all in considering our total insignificance and helplessness.