NIGER EXPEDITION. 85 
Botany. Christian Smith returned to Europe to embark 
in the ill-fated Congo Expedition: when he again saw the 
Peak of Teneriffe, he welcomed it as a familiar object, and 
bade it adieu, rejoicing that a still more novel field of inquiry 
was opened to him, beyond this scene of his early exertions. 
A few short months terminated his life and hopes : like Vogel, 
he fell a victim to the dread fever of the pestilential coast of 
Africa: like him, too, he was a martyr in the cause of Bo- 
tanical Science. 
Fraught with so many and such touching associations, no 
naturalist-voyager can see the Fortunate Isles rising, one 
by one, on the horizon of the mighty Atlantic, without a 
feeling of melancholy, while he reflects on the fate of these 
his two predecessors—both accomplished Naturalists of their 
age and day—whose prospects and hopes were in every 
respect as bright, perhaps brighter, than his own. 
The excellent and beautiful work of Mr. Webb, on the 
Natural History of the Canaries, leaves little to be said, 
especially of their Botany, and renders even an enumeration 
of the few species gathered by Vogel and the Botanist of the 
Antarctic Expedition unnecessary ; for they were all collected 
Within a very few miles of Santa Cruz, during a very hurried 
walk, and scarcely include a dozen kinds. This locality is 
one of the most barren of the whole group, especially in the 
immediate neighbourhood of the sea. The broad frontage of 
cliff and mountain, reaching upwards for several thousand 
feet'above the town, and fore-shortened to the view from 
Seaboard, presents a progressive increase of verdure from 
the water's edge to the mountains. At this season, when 
the vines are out of leaf, nothing green meets the eye. 
The trees, either standing singly or in very small clumps, 
dot the alternate ridges and steep gullies with which the 
slopes are everywhere cut like the edge of a saw, producing 
that spotty effect in the landscape so admirably rendered 
in the phytographical illustrations of Mr. Webb's work, 
and which is eminently characteristic both of the Canaries 
and Madeira. 
