John Burchell was, according to Wikipedia, an English explorer, naturalist, traveller, artist, and author. His thousands of plant specimens, as well as field journals from his South African expedition, are held by Kew Gardens, and his insect collection by the Oxford University Museum. He spent five years living on the island of St Helena, first trading with a business partner in London before accepting a position as teacher then as a botanist before heading south to Cape Town in 1810. Records show that although the ship reached Table Bay, it had to wait 13 days before the sea was calm enough to disembark (Think about that delay when you are desperately waiting for the aircraft doors to open after a long flight!).
Essentially this man collected specimens of almost everything he encountered over a five year period of exploring 'the interior'. In 1815 he shipped about 63,000 specimens back to the UK for classification. A few years later he organised a similar expedition to Brazil, again collecting a mind boggling number of specimens, including 20,000 insects. Sadly Wiki records that Burchell ended his own life by suicide in 1863. His collections are held in Kew gardens as well as in Oxford University.
As a true explorer of his time, Burchell not only documented a vast collection of plant, animal and insect life during his travels, but he also drew complex maps illustrating parts of Africa previously unexplored by Europeans, as well as painting numerous scenes of the geography and life in Africa. A sort of Edwardian Gerald Durrell perhaps? He must have been an extraordinary character.
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