656 BOTANICAL INFORMATION. 
defiles, and, on passing them, another such monumental city 
of Nature's own work is before the traveller; and not until 
he is so fortunate as to strike upon a river can he again 
resume his direct route. 
An almost total absence of animal and vegetable life, and a 
death-like stillness pervade these regions, which together 
with the want of good water, of grass for the horses, 
and the parching sun of August, rendered this the most 
intolerable place I ever visited in my botanical rambles. Yet —— 
I was not disappointed, for some of the rarest specimens d 
plants in my collection were gathered from one solitary cliff 
within tbis region, about the junction of Ham's and Black's 
rivers, of the uppermost waters of the Colorado on the west. 
A low crest-like ridge of sandstone rises on an isolated massive 
bed of bituminous shale, sloping towards the river from the 
adjacent desert; plains teeming with luxuriant plants of Stan- 
leya viridiflora, Nuttall, &c. Around it grew bushes of the o 
singular Helianthus, No. 96; and below, on the carbonaceous — — 
shale, I found the splendid Hydrophyllum, No. 93, with the — 
Bartonia, No. 95. On the lower part ofthe slope I gathered, E 
partly on a loamy calcareous crust, various Chenopodiace®, — 
and a few Onagrariee, comprising the numbers 92, 94, 100, — 
101, 103 and 104. : 
There is perhaps not another Hydrophylleous plant more - : 
elegant than the above. It is about six inches high, robust — — 
and divided from its base into branches, which bear ample ER 
cymes of long recurved racemes, densely covered with rather | 
small azure-blue or deep indigo-coloured flowers, which by 
their contiguity give a neat semi-globose outline fo the 
plant. The other plants, though rare, are mere botanical | 
curiosities, except a few species of Pentstemon, which were | 
already in seed. On the depressed plains no plants arè- 
visible except a few groups of Onosmodium, n. 164, and an 
arborescent species of Artemisia (cana and tridentata), 
fringing the margin of the adjoining plains; these are the 
only signs of vegetable life. ie 
Of animals we saw none, save a single prowling wolf and : 
