148 BOTANICAL INFORMATION. 
On the 14th of November, we found ourselves on the Californian 
coast, in sight of the Island of Guadelupe, whose northern part is 
clothed with Pines. The captain intended to send a boat ashore, but 
was deterred from doing so by the high surf. Without delay, we pro- 
ceeded to Mazatlan, in Mexico. Its Flora does not materially differ 
from that of other places of the same coast; butas I was enabled, for 
five days, to visit the interior, I had a good opportunity of seeing a 
specimen of the mountain vegetation of Mexico. 
started, accompanied by Mr. Pakenham, a midshipman of the 
Herald, for San Sebastian, a town eighteen leagues inland, which, they 
told me, was elevated, and produced a great variety of plants. The 
lagoons and mangrove swamps that surround the port of Mazatlan, the 
abominable smell they diffuse, and the unhealthiness they spread 
over the adjacent country, rendered the first five leagues of our journey 
very unpleasant, but when we reached more solid ground, all was well. 
The Tecomate of the Mexicans (Crescentia alata, H. B. et K.), was here 
very plentiful. It is a tree about thirty feet high, whose fruit, re- 
sembling very much an unripe orange, contains a pulp of a sourish- 
bitter taste, which is boiled with sugar, and taken against complaints 
of the chest. All Crescentie, lam of opinion, are naturally littoral 
plants ; for, although they are not so closely confined to the sea-coast 
as the Avicennias and Rhizophoras, yet they are, like many other mari- 
time plants, the Hibiscus arboreus, Cocus nucifera, and Pithecolobium 
macrostachyum, for instance, capable of growing, under cultivation, far 
inland, but do not spontaneously extend their range beyond the limits 
of the sea-breeze. 
San Sebastian we reached after one day’s journey, but great was my 
disappointment in finding there the vegetation unchanged; its eleva- 
tion hardly amounting to 1000 feet. Luckily the gentleman to whom 
I had a letter of introduction, took some interest in botany, (ever since 
Humboldt and Bonpland stayed at his house, as he expressed himself,) 
and told me that at one day’s journey from San Sebastian, he had a 
farm surrounded by mountains, covered with Fir-trees, and several 
species of Oak. The inducement was so great, that I did not hesitate 
to go there, thinking that one day spent amongst the mountains would 
be better than three in the lowlands 
Next morning we started. Don Alejandro Bueso, our host, old as 
he was, accompanied us. We passed the villages of Nauches and Santa 
