312 DR. HOOKER’S MISSION TO INDIA. 
face a zigzag road was formed : to this I directed my course. ` At 
the foot of the rocks I found a few more plants in the beds of the 
dry water-courses; but none were in flower. All were Arabian- 
looking, Autichorus, Tephrosia, Polygala, Amaranthaceæ, Acacias, 
Rutacee, and Capparidee always prevailing, with a frutescent 
Lycium. The shrubs were in woeful and dead-like plight, having 
very stout distorted spiny stems, short, woody branches, few leaves, 
and no flowers. A leafless, pale yellow-white, dichotomous Zwphor- 
bia was perhaps the most common. 
The road to the top of the ridge was remarkable, where perfect, 
but much of it is broken away: the workmanship is so good that no 
one suspects the Turks of having constructed it, but people assert 
that it was formed, as well as the crowning forts, by captive Jews, ` 
under Solyman the Magnificent. The stones are of excessively 
hard vitreous basalt, more or less squared, placed side by side 
without cement or mortar, and so well fitted that in some places 
the causeway seems to ride, like a saddle, on the knife-edge ridge. 
At other parts the sides of the cliffs are hewn away, and I was 
constantly startled by the road apparently terminating abruptly 
over a tremendous precipice; but it was really carried up at an 
acute angle behind me. Towards the top I met with two speci- 
mens. of a plant which I recognised to be the same as a shrub 
shown to me by Dr. Lindley some two years ago, at the gardens 
of the Hort. Society. It has a curious stem eight or ten feet high, 
expanding like a trumpet at the base, a few short branches and 
rounded lobed leaves. I saw no young plants, nor fruit, nor 
flower, and could only reach a twig from the road. The Hort. 
Society plants were, if I remember rightly, covered with Dufou- 
rea flammea, and were probably from another part of the island. 
At this elevation, 1,500 feet, I met with Lichens, on the rocks, 
crustaceous species, and on Acacia stems, Roccella and Rama- 
lina; but no other Cryptogamia. The road met the ridge at à 
curious cut, as it were, in the wall; and on reaching the latter, 
a general view opened out of the west side of the peninsula, the 
bay, and steamers at anchor off the “ Point,” where Capt. Haines’ 
house is situated. Our own vessel, with her lofty masts, was 
