While there, she met the British astronomer and photochemist Sir John Herschel, who was observing the southern celestial hemisphere. She also met Charles Hay Cameron, twenty years her senior and a reformer of Indian law and education who later invested in coffee plantations in what is now Sri Lanka. Charles Hay was also there to convalesce, likely from a virulent malarial fever which often spread during the Indian monsoon season. The illness he suffered caused recurring kidney trouble and diarrhœa for the rest of his life.