v 
409 BOTANICAL INFORMATION. 
sleep of winter. A few stunted plants of Salvia clandestina 
and Alyssum maritimum were all I could pick up at Notre 
Dame de la Garde, though the weather was clear and the sun 
brilliant. 
On the evening of the 1st of April, I took my passage on 
board the steam-boat *the PAocion," for Valencia, whence I 
hoped to find the means of pursuing my journey. 
When the annoyances and delays of the first departure are 
over, and the traveller has happily escaped from the trammels 
of passports and custom-house regulations, those two hin- 
drances which bar alike egress and ingress in civilized coun- 
tries, it is, indeed, delightful to cleave the liquid waves and 
to breathe the free air of the open sea. Marseilles, with its 
forest of masts and eminences, crowned with fortifications, 
soon appeared only like a whitish speck, which disappeared in 
the advancing gloom of night. The intermitting revolving 
lights from the Isle of Planet and the other beacon towers, 
rose bright on the horizon, as we proceeded on our way, 
lighted by the lamps suspended to our mast, gliding now and 
then past some motionless ship, which, like a nocturnal 
phantom, was waiting for the breeze, with furled sails and 
dropped anchor. It is seldom that the first night at sea 
brings much sleep; it takes some time to get used to the 
rolling of the waves, the creaking of the timbers, the narrow 
limits and incommodious shape of one's berth, and I was 
consequently stirring very early next morning, and found 
that we had passed the low mountains near Narbonne, and 
that the Pyrénées were in sight, among whose snowy an 
often cloud-capped summits, our sailors thought they, could 
distinguish the Canigou. Soon the rocky steep of Roussillon 
rose before us in all its details; and the many ancient 
buildings, blackened by time, and crowning several conical 
hills, recalled the period when repeated incursions of Moors 
had rendered such posts of observation needful for the 
defence of the country. Leaving Collioure upon our right, 
we arrived before the little fortification which protects the an- 
chorage of Port Vendres. This place consists of nothing 
more than a row of very shabby houses facing the port; but 
drca p. lae 
8 
P 
