Anders Sparrman is writing from the Cape of Good Hope where they arrived on March 22, 1775. Johann Reinhold Forster has sent a report to Linnaeus on what they have found of scientific interest during their voyage. He will also soon send a collection to Linnaeus from the South Sea. Sparrman is looking forward to demonstrating to Linnaeus his own discoveries. He is sorry that the first two parcels with Cape plants have been opened and plundered. From Linnaeus’s two catalogues Sparrman can see that it is especially the new species that are missing. Sparrman hopes that his latest parcel has arrived safely. It contained a box with insects, a bottle with fish, the skin of an unknown animal, and a herb packet. The first herb packet sent to Carl Gustaf Ekeberg has disappeared.
Sparrman has not received any letters from Linnaeus, nor has Forster. There is a rumour that letters to them have been sent to China by mistake. Sparrman is afraid that the Medical Faculty [at the University of Uppsala] has forgotten him, and that he cannot count on their support any more. In that case he will have to emigrate and leave his dear country for ever. However, he has not lost hope altogether. He still believes that Linnaeus is favouring him: the scholarship awarded to him is a proof of that. Moreover, according to Carl Peter Thunberg, Linnaeus has honoured him by naming a plant after him.
Sparrman has not neglected his studies of medicine during the voyage. Among other things, he has translated Nils Rosén von Rosenstein’s study of children’s diseases into English [Sparrman refers to his translation of Rosentein’s Underrättelser om barn-sjukdomar och deras bote-medel, The diseases of children, and their remedies]. It will be published soon.
During his stay in The Cape province Sparrman will devote his time to botany. It is a pity that Thunberg has left for Japan. He could have advised him on places to visit. The English gardener Francis Masson has been helpful, though. Sparrman is sorry that he has had no information from Linnaeus about the fate of his latest parcel containing plants and insects.
Sparrman cannot boast of having discovered thousands of new plants, like Joseph Banks and Daniel Solander, who were fortunate enough to come to “the real treasure of plants”, i.e. New Holland. However, Sparrman can report hundreds of new plants from tropical islands. It has been his duty to describe these plants according to the Linnean method. The collecting of plants has been very difficult and risky. Often their botanical work has been disturbed by stones, spears, clubs, and poisoned arrows. Sometimes, when Sparrman was at work at describing plants, he had to have a pistol in his left hand and the pencil in his right. In spite of all his precautions, he was once attacked and robbed.
Sparrman encloses a plant from Cape Horn. It is a Monandria. He asks Linnaeus to forward two enclosed letters, to Lars Montin and his mother [Brita Sparrman], so he can get answers from them before leaving the Cape province.