BIG BAD LANDS 



very far from Iquique in South America. " The road was 

 strewed with the bones and dried skins of the many beasts of 

 burden which had perished upon it from fatigue. Excepting 

 the Vultur aura^ which preys on the carcases, I saw neither 

 bird, quadruped, reptile, nor insect. On the coast moun- 

 tains, at the height of about 2000 feet, where, during this 

 season, the clouds generally hang, a very few cacti were grow- 

 ing in the clefts of rock ; and the loose sand was strewed 

 over with a lichen which lies on the surface quite unattached. 

 ... In some parts it was in sufficient quantity to tinge the 

 sand, as seen from a distance, of a pale yellowish colour. 

 Farther inland, during the whole ride of fourteen leagues, I 

 saw only one other vegetable production, and that was a 

 most minute yellow lichen, growing on the bones of the 

 dead mules."" ^ 



Rydberg, speaking of the Big Bad Lands in South Dakota, 

 says that there are in some places great stretches of land con- 

 sisting of canons separated by small ridges, in which not a 

 speck of green is visible over several sections.^ (A section is 

 more than a square mile.) 



But though Aden looks exactly like " a barrack stove that 

 no one's lit for years and years," plants grow there. Even in 

 Egypt, when one has left the Nile inundation limit, a 

 botanical eye very seldom fails to detect plants of one sort or 

 another even in a dangerous and thorough-going desert. 



Plants are almost as hardy as men ; they can adapt them- 

 selves to almost any climate. 



In some curious and inexplicable way the very dangers of 

 the climate seem to produce automatically a means of resist- 

 ing it. The chief peril, of course, is a loss of the precious 



^ Darwin, Nattn-alist^s Voyage round the Wot'ld in the Beagle^ p. 387. 

 •^ Schimper, Z.c, p. 674. 



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