22 CAPTAIN TUCKEY’S NARRATIVE. 
tion of the spring at San Felippe, I did not meet a drop 
of running water, and all the annual plants were so burnt 
up as to be reducible to powder between the fingers. The 
only trees seen here are a few melancholy dates, useful only 
by their branches, as their fruit does not come to perfec- 
tion; and some thinly scattered mimosas, serving only to 
render the general nakedness more apparent. The lesser 
vegetation consists of about a dozen shrubs, on which, as 
well as the mimosa, the goats browse, and some herbaceous 
plants, particularly a convolvolus, which covers the most 
sandy spots, a solanum, a lotus, an aloe, &c. 
Professor Smith and Mr. Tudor, who employed the 
whole of our short stay here in a botanizing excursion to 
the mountains, describe the interior of the island as more 
pleasing than the sea shores. ‘The valleys, as they ascended 
from the inferior region, being well watered by springs 
forming little brooks, and covered with plantations of fruits 
and vegetables ; the hills well clothed with grass, affording 
pasture to numerous herds of cattle and flocks of sheep. 
The result of Dr. Smith’s botanical researches is thus stated 
by him.* «The Cape de Verde islands, though situated 
* It may be necessary to observe, that though Dr. Smith understands and 
speaks the English language with great correctness, he, as may be expected in a 
foreigner, does not write it with equal facility, hence I have been obliged to 
put the written observations he has furnished me with into a more correct form 
as to manner, the matter being entirely his own. 
