26 JOURNAL OF THE 
ere we anchored at Porto Grande. I hastened the next 
morning early on deck, impatient to survey, for the first 
time, an entirely tropical vegetation. The back of the bay is 
flat and sandy, with a few cottages on the north-east side: 4 
beyond the shore rise hills overtopped in the distance by 3 
mountains. I could clearly desery two main valleys, reaching — 
far inland, and exhibiting the same white sand as the beach. — 
Every place was burnt up and bare of vegetation, except a — 
few shrubs in one of the valleys, whither I directed my first — 
walk, and found these were Tamarix Senegalensis, a shrub — 
mostly 6 to 7 feet high, but sometimes a small tree, being 3 
the only plant, I might almost say the only object, which - 
in these valleys affords any shadow. After a search of four g 
hours, climbing several hills and crossing as many valleys, — 
I only met with two plants, the same Tamariz, and alow — 
shrub-like Labiata, (Lavandula formosa?) almost dried up | 
with few leaves and some blossoms just opening. I found à 
subsequently, that this plant spreads over the whole island. : 
The Great Desert, whose horrors are so eloquently described à 
by travellers, cannot exhibit a more desolate aspect than . 
this part of St. Vincent. Yet the soil ought to be fertile, for — 
it is a conglomerate of large and small bits of basalt, in - 
a loamy and chalky soil, closely covered in many places with 
dried grass, forming natural hay and furnishing scanty 
fodder to cattle and goats, when they have not the Tamariz | 
to nibble at. This soil only wants water, and we may guess, | 
from these remnants of its vegetation, how fertile it must - 
be, when supplied during the brief rainy season with some | 
moisture.* To the above-mentioned plants of the plain, (if 1 
may so express myself, where there is only hill and dale), I | 
could add subsequently very few more. A small Euphorbia, — 
perhaps prostrata or serpyllifolia, but appearing new to me; a 
a few littoral plants, especially Zygophyllum album or sim- 
plex; and on the shore, Cassia obovata, just then in blossom 4 
* According to the natives, the wet season lasts from the beginning . 
of August to the middle of Oct. 2 
ober, pretty regularly ; but times vétf i 
little rain falls, FT CM es ; 
