CALIFORNIA ACADEMY OF SCIENCES. 215 



The first naturalist to visit Guadalupe was Dr. Edward 

 Palmer, who was landed there in the month of February, 

 1875, remaining until May. A most interesting account of 

 the vegetation of the island was published, from Dr. Palmer's 

 notes and specimens, by Mr. Sereno Watson, in the begin- 

 ning of 1876, in the eleventh volume of the Proceedings of 

 the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. 



So intelligent and so zealous a collector as Dr. Palmer, 

 passing there so many weeks, at so favorable a season of the 

 year, would not be likely to leave much for succeeding ex- 

 plorers to do. Nevertheless, I was made very glad last 

 winter by the prospect of an opportunity of making myself 

 the second scientific voj-ager to — 



" This sweet lone isle amid the sea." 



Sailing from San Diego toward evening on the 16th of 

 April, on board a little sloop of ten tons' burden, with one 

 fellow naturalist and two seamen, we made our sail of three 

 hundred and thirty miles in about fifty hours, anchoring in 

 the late twilight, close under the two thousand feet of per- 

 pendicular cliffs that rise abruptly from the ocean to form 

 the northeastern shore of Guadalupe. 



The early morning light disclosed at a very short distance 

 from our moorings, a narrow line of beach under the cliffs, 

 and on this beach a line of low cabins, their walls made of 

 boulders, and their roofs consisting of a thatch of palm 

 leaves. The dwellers in this rude maritime village are a 

 band of some forty Lower California soldiers, who have 

 been stationed there since the beginning of 1884, by the 

 Mexican Government, to prevent the wholesale slaughter of 

 the goats, of which there are many thousands still on the 

 island, notwithstanding the fact that for some two or three 

 years prior to 1884, many a cargo of goat skins and tallow 

 had been taken to San Diego. 



Our first labor, upon landing, was that of climbing to the 

 summit of the island, a distance of five or six miles, by a 



