328 NOTES OF A BOTANIST 



Andes, which has been upraised from the ocean at no very remote 

 period, and is still nearly as destitute of vegetation as the Sahara 

 of Africa. It is, however, watered by a few rivers, some of which 

 rise in the summits of the Andes, and run with a permanent 

 stream into the ocean, diffusing fertility and perennial verdure 

 throughout the valleys they traverse ; others, rising in the lower 

 hills which form an outwork of the great chain, carry a consider- 

 able volume of water to the sea during the rainy season, but for 

 the rest of the year the lower part of their course is dry. By far 

 the most important of these rivers is the Guayaquil, whose 

 affluents drain the slopes of the loftiest portion of the western 

 equatorial Ancles (including the mighty Chimborazo), and on 

 issuing into the plain form a network of navigable streams which 

 at the city of Guayaquil combine into a noble river. 



The northern limit of the Peruvian desert is usually placed 

 about Tumbez, at the southern extremity of the Gulf of Guayaquil, 

 in latitude 3 30' S., but I now know, from personal inspection, 

 that the coast of the Pacific north of the gulf has the same 

 geological conformation, the same climate, and almost as scanty a 

 vegetation as it has south of it. At what point to northward the 

 struggle between barrenness and fertility begins to be equally 

 balanced, I am unable to say, but I am inclined to place it about 

 Cape Pasado, at the mouth of the river Chones. Guayaquil itself, 

 as seen from the river, with its groves of coco palms and fruit 

 trees, and its picturesque wooded hills, might be supposed a 

 region of forests ; but the moment we pass the skirts of the city to 

 westward we find that the country is nearly all savanna, either 

 open and grassy or scattered over with bushes and low groves, 

 and that the woods are confined to the hills and to the borders of 

 salt-creeks. As we descend the river from Guayaquil (i.e. to 

 southward), the ground on the right margin, beyond the mangrove 

 fringe, grows more and more open, and at the southernmost point 

 of the mainland, or the northern entrance to the gulf, where 

 stands the village of El Morro, at the foot of a steep rounded hill, 

 the ground is already nearly as bare of vegetation as the coast of 

 Peru. Throughout this distance, and thence northward along the 

 shores of the Pacific to beyond Point St. Elena, there is no stream 

 of fresh water, although there are a few salt-creeks ; but in latitude 

 i 55' S. we come on the river Manglar-alto, along whose banks 

 there is vigorous vegetation, as there is also on similar small 

 streams entering at wide intervals to northward ; while the inter- 

 mediate ground is either nearly desert or is a sort of savanna, 

 sparsely set with bushes and cactuses, and bare of herbs except 

 after the rare and exceptional rains. 



About Cape San Lorenzo (latitude i 5' S.) the coast is bold 

 and broken, and almost completely clad with low bushy vegeta- 

 tion. In the village of the same name, which nestles in the bay 



