BOTANICAL INFORMATION. 647 
nents, where the elevation of the mountains arrests the land- 
winds and exposes the navigators to long calms, which we 
justly dreaded and soon experienced, compelling us frequently 
to go far back to obtain a shelter, and tempting us to rail 
alike at the sea, at our small and inconvenient vessel, and at 
the wretched food to which we were reduced; for all our 
provisions from Valencia being exhausted, we had nothing to 
eat but a wretchedly small pittance of ill-cooked rice. Our 
sailors, well accustomed to such a lifes lay all day long 
stretched on the deck with true Spanish nonchalence, drawing 
monotonous sounds from their guitars, and from another in- 
strument with metallic strings, which they struck with a piece 
of copper, and which is called a cifra. Thus time went 
wearily on, till the current carried us through the Strait, and 
we saw the white houses of Motril, where we should unload 
a part of our cargo. Delighted with the day's respite thus 
afforded us, we hastened to land, but had no sooner reached 
the shore than we were compelled to halt till the Sanidad 
should arrive from the town and permit us to walk about. And 
as the Sanidad first had to rise, then to breakfast, and then to 
smoke a cigarito, we had to wait a long hour, when it actually 
arrived, in the form of two brisk communicative gentlemen, 
With whom I soon made acquaintance, and we proceeded 
together to the town, a short mile distant, passing through 
à well cultivated plain, watered by a stream, fringed with 
White poplars, and interspersed with cotton-grounds and 
tropical-looking sugar-canes, "This latter culture was intro- 
duced by the Arabs, and may be observed all along the coast ` 
om Velez to Motril, filling the mouths of the vallies, 
wherever the ground is flat and fertile. It was once far more 
extensive, but the discovery of the New World dealt it a 
fatal blow. We looked into an ingenio or sugar manufactory, 
where the process is very rudely carried on ; and the sugar is 
coarse grained, ill-coloured, and not well flavoured. Such as 
it is, however, it sells well in the country, and the proprietors 
declare that any improvement in the article would not 
