“Believe me, my dear Mitford, “Affectionately yours, “J. D. HOOKER.” Armed with this, to Sir William Dyer I think I can say “habet!” In spite of the two alarms of 1865 and 1885, Sir Joseph Hooker’s vitality was so great that he lived till 1911, and was able to labour on until the summer of that year. Only a few months before his death he wrote to me about the work upon which he was engaged, a study of the balsams, and told me with pride that he was able to use his microscope as well as ever. I went to see him that summer in his lovely suntrap at Sunningdale. He was the same bright, cheerful friend of old days and most affectionate in his welcome. The microscope and the MSS. littered on his study table still spoke of work, work, work. “It’s dogged as does it,” was a favourite quotation of his. We went into the garden and Lady Hooker gave us tea under the trees. He chatted gaily over old times and about old friends, and was greatly interested in the talk of an American lady, a lover of trees, who had come to pay him a visit. But in spite of his indomitable spirits I found him much aged during the last few months—indeed, at ninety-four that was to be expected, and I felt that this would be our last meeting. I was not much surprised when I heard that on the 10th of December the dear old man had passed away, mercifully and painlessly, in his sleep. CHAPTER XXXIX 1898 ANURADHAPURA In the year 1898, business took me once more to Ceylon. One of my sons had gone out there to start in life as a tea-planter, and I must needs go to see how he was faring and what were his prospects for the future. And so we set out, my daughter Iris and I, and my old friend Reginald Yorke, the best of shipmates, came with us. He, too, had a son in Ceylon, who some years later was crushed to death against a tree by a wounded elephant in East Africa. When I first saw Ceylon in 1865 Point de Galle was the place of call for steamers—a bad and dangerous harbour, but so prodigally beautiful, with its coral reefs and its palm groves fringing the sea, studded with the quaint outrigged boats of the fisher-folk, that one could fancy oneself arriving in such an island as those into which Captain Cook felt his way in the Pacific. Galle was quite unspoilt and primitive—just like the pictures of the spice islands in the travel books of our childhood—a fitting approach to one of the fairest of God’s creations. I felt as if I should never weary of watching the intensely blue sea lapping the very roots of the cocoanut palms, which tradition said could never flourish far from the sound of its waves. Here was indeed the poetry of travel, the reward of them “that go down to the sea in ships ... and see the works of the Lord and His wonders in the deep.”