Stewart — Botanical Conditions ,on the Galapagos Islands. 309 



and northeast. There is a small cove on the northeast side, shel- 

 tered by a small islet, which affords a good landing place for 

 boats. Good anchorage can be obtained off the mouth of this 

 cove, but as none is marked on the charts of these islands, vessels 

 should take soundings from a small boat before attempting to 

 come to anchor here. 



The sides of the island are steep in most places, and all of the 

 lower part is covered with loose fragments of lava among which 

 there is a scanty soil. There are two old craters in the central 

 part of the island which directly join one another there being no 

 distinct rim separating the two. The crater to the north is the 

 smaller, and its side walls are very steep and redish in color as 

 is the soil which covers its floor. The southern crater forms a 

 broad basin the floor of which is 850 ft. above sea level, and 400 

 ft. above the floor of the northern crater. There are some irreg- 

 ularities in the floor of the larger crater, but the most of it forms 

 a rather flat plain, with occasional low places in it, some of which 

 appeared to have been recently filled with water. There is a 

 considerable amount of soil in this crater, which is light gray in 

 color and loose in texture. 



There is a high ridge to the east of the larger crater which in 

 one place attains an elevation of 1,300 ft., the highest point on 

 the island. The west side of this ridge is steep and there are 

 cliffs in some places of a considerable height. The east side of 

 this ridge is not so steep, however, but slopes downward to the 

 tops of the cliffs along the eastern shore of the island. The up- 

 per part of this i^dge is irregular and is covered with soil in 

 places made up of disintegrated lava and vegetable mold. 



Halophytic plants are but poorly represented on the island, 

 and so far as was observed, consist of a single tree of Avicennia 

 officinalis, a few Laguncularia bushes, and a few small stunted 

 trees of Rhizophora Mangle, all of which grow at the end of the 

 cove on the northeast side of the island. Sesuvium Edmonstonei 

 also occurs here but not under halophyite conditions. It is 

 found in various places on the northeast side of the island to an. 

 elevation of 450 ft. 



Unfortunately we were not able to get to this island during- 

 the rainy season, so at the times we visited here the vegetation 

 was in the resting condition. The lower parts had more the ap- 

 pearance of a winter landscape in temperate region than that of 

 a region within only a few miles of the equator. With the ex- 



