154 Rev. R. T. Lowe on the " Chaparro" of Fuerteventura, 



Furnished by the kind and princely hospitality of Don Pedro 

 Manrique de Lara y Cabrera with horses, guides, provisions, and 

 every appliance for the expedition, I set out from Betancuria 

 at 8 a.m. on the 6th of April, 1859; and after a long and 

 weary ride of eighteen or twenty miles parallel with the coast, 

 in a south-westerly direction from Rio Palmas, across an appa- 

 rently endless succession of arid, stony, pathless wastes and dry 

 Barrancos, attained at last the object of my search. We had 

 just crossed, a little way above its mouth, the bed of a dry Bar- 

 ranco, called the Barranco Gastey, two or three leagues beyond 

 a place called Mesque ; and weary and despairing of success, as 

 we were now, at 2 p. m., entering upon another seemingly inter- 

 minable, hot, barren, sandy waste, sloping westward down to 

 the sea, without apparent trace of either animal or vegetable life, 

 I was about to give the order to turn our horses' heads home- 

 wards, when all at once one of my guides exclaimed, " Mira, 

 Senor, el Chaparro !" ("Look, sir, the Chaparro 1") . On horseback 

 I could perceive nothing but the usual loose grey stones that lie 

 scattered everywhere on these sun-burnt, ever parched-up, dull, 

 and dreary wastes ; but jumping off, I found that some at least 

 of what appeared such were really plants, and presently the dis- 

 covery of flowering examples completed my surprise and satis- 

 faction. Much of what had appeared so like round-headed 

 stones covered with grey lichen, that on horseback it was scarcely 

 possible to discern the difference, proved at once to be a plant, 

 the object of my search, and a Convolvulus. 



Although the day was so far spent, and we had at least some 

 twenty miles to retrace our steps, I remained more than half 

 an hour examining the locality and taking descriptive notes 

 from the plants in situ. They were pretty thickly scattered on 

 the spot, but did not extend far, occupying a space of perhaps 

 half a mile in breadth, and ending as abruptly as they had 

 begun. Whilst I was thus exploring their characters and the 

 limits of their place of growth, my guides were occupied in 

 rooting up a few plants for specimens, — a work of no small dif- 

 ficulty, owing to the excessive toughness and hardness of their 

 stems and roots, though, warned of this peculiarity beforehand, 

 we had brought a sort of pick-axe for the purpose. 



I rode on about a mile further, crossing another dry Barranco, 

 remarkable for being lined on each side near the sea with fine 

 tamarisk trees or bushes — the only green thing that I had seen 

 for miles. On the sloping plain beyond this ravine, called the 

 Plaga Biocho, I found a still larger patch of finer Chaparros. 

 This spot could not be more than two or three leagues in a north 

 or north-west direction from Chilegua, and near the origin or 

 neck of the Jandia promontory. 



