168 QUESTIONABLE USAGE.

to wait at the Brazils till his ship could be refitted,
he reached Cadiz on the 22d February 1785; “ but
instead (says his biographer) of the reception he
expected and deserved from the nation he had
chiefly benefited, every Spaniard, from the sub-
alterns of the customhouse to the ministers of
state, seemed leagued to mortify him and to render
his labours useless. His collections were exposed
to the rude and useless scrutiny of the barbarians
at the customhouse, so as to be rendered useless,
in a great measure, even to those who meant to
plunder them. The whole were thrown afterwards
into damp warehouses, where they lay for the plants
to rot, and the inestimable collections of seeds to
lose their powers of vegetation, till certain forms
of the grave and sapient most Catholic Church
were gone through. He could never obtain that
the seeds should be committed to the earth so as
to be of use, and hence the gardens of Europe were
never enriched with more than some half score of
his botanical discoveries, among which were the
inagnificent Datura arborea, the beautiful Salvia
formosa, and the fragrant Verbena triphylla; this
last will be a ‘monumentum cere perennius’ with
those who shall ever know his history.” *
Disappointed and foiled, Dombey was compelled
to remain at Cadiz without friends, whose sympathy

* See art. “ Dombey” in “ Rees’ Cyclopedia,” by Sir J. E. Smith.