196 PITTONIA. 
ists. The shores when reached are barren in the extreme, 
tenantless, desolate; the long extended mountain ranges 
affording but one single stream of water not too salt for use. 
The thorough scientific exploration of such a place is still 
waiting to be made, and doubtless will long wait. 
But, in the spring of the year 1885, more than a quarter of 
a century after Dr. Veatch’s sojourn there, the writer was 
privileged to devote three days to botanizing on one small 
corner of the island. Having joined the veteran naturalist, 
Mr. George W. Dunn, upon a voyage from San Diego to the 
island of Guadalupe, we determined, at the expiration of our 
time on that island, to take the two days' sail southeastward 
and make a landing upon Cedros. 
Although we ought not to have traversed much more than 
ninety miles of sea in getting to our destination, we had been 
out from Guadalupe fifty hours when, in the early morning 
of the 27th of April, we first beheld the peaks of Cedros 
rising blue on our eastern horizon, some forty miles distant 
still; when we had covered half that space the breezes for- 
sook us altogether, and we had a tedious half day studying 
trom afar the island's ribbed and furrowed and barren western 
slopes; our attention being diverted now and then to the 
skimming flight of a flying fish, or the sporting about us of 
gray whales as large as our boat itself, which object they 
seemed to regard with as little fear or suspicion, as if it had 
been only some other sea-beast of their own alliance. But 
an afternoon wind all at once gave us good speed, and we 
were soon near enough the shore to both observe its trees and 
larger shrubs, and to be a little hindered in our progress by 
vast irregular fields of kelp, the thicker parts of which our 
seamen's skill was constantly engaged in avoiding. Only an 
hour before sunset had we rounded the northern extremity of 
the island and east anchor off a narrow strip of pebbly beach. 
We were immediately set ashore, in order that while day- 
light still remained, we might get a glimpse of what the 
morrow's botanizing in this strange spot was to be like. 
Climbing up from the narrow beach over a few feet of irregu- 
