45 



no sooner tasted the water than I spit it out with disgust. Who 

 could drink brine ? 



All the pools and rivulets which occur in this region absorb 

 more or less soda from the soil, which seems everywhere impreg- 

 nated with this mineral. Luckily we carried with our lunch a 

 bottle of the condensed water used in Caldera, or we should have 

 been unable to quench our thirst. For this disappointment I 

 was consoled by finding a number of beautiful flowering plants 

 among the boulders that filled the ravine. 



The most attractive of the plants were a very handsome species 

 of Alstrmneria, which exhibited great lilac flowers, the petals 

 streaked with blue veins and yellow blotches, and a tall Centaiirea 

 with white heads as gay looking as those of our Ox-eye daisy. 

 A shrubby Euphorbia, five or six feet in height, with large white 

 flowers, was abundant. This plant possesses a copious milky 

 juice which pours from every wound made in its stem or leaves, 

 and from this property is popularly called Lechero (milkman) and 

 hence has been named by Philippi E. lactiflua. A pretty Stachys 

 peeped from under the rocks whose shade it loves, and a broad- 

 leaved, clammy Nicotiana and a Solamim, heavily laden with 

 trusses of bright purple blossoms grew in more sunny spots. In 

 this vicinity also flourishes a flower greatly coveted by the inhabi- 

 tants of Caldera and called by them Anuna {Habranthus amina 

 Phil.). It springs from a bulb of the size of an onion and bears 

 at the summit of a tall scape a cluster of yellow tubular blossoms. 

 The most charming of all the plants collected in this quarter is a 

 Tropaeolum {T. tricolor, Lind.) a delicate vine which climbs upon 

 shrubs in thick masses, profusely decorated with spurred corollas 

 whose bright tints of orange, red and blue offer a standing invita- 

 tion to all the humming birds that live in the vicinity. 



A few days after returning from this excursion, I made 

 another in the company of a friend to a craggy hill known as the 

 Morro, some ten miles south of Caldera. Morro is a Spanish 

 word denoting any object that is round and over-hanging, and is 

 applied on the coast to high rounded promontories that project 

 into the ocean. Our route to this promontory lay by the seaside, 

 around a lovely bay and across a beach two or three miles in ex- 

 tent, which at low tide is as smooth and hard as a floor. So 



