ON THE PACIFIC COAST 339 



grow also on the desert coast of Ecuador, along with a few others 

 not found in Northern Peru. 



In the ravines which run from the tablazo down to the valley, 

 besides a few stunted Algarrobos, there is another small prickly 

 tree, a species of Cantua, with black stems and branches, which 

 becomes clad with fugacious, roundish, Loranthus-like leaves and 

 pretty white flowers only in the rainy years. There also grows a 

 Cactus called Rabo de zorra (fox's brush), from its usually simple 

 stems being densely beset on the numerous angles or strice with 

 reddish bristle-like prickles. 



On the margin of the river, except where the banks are 

 unusually high, there is a narrow strip of land, called the vega, 

 which is overflowed every year about February or March by the 

 flush of water from the Andes, although no rain may have fallen 

 in the plain. The vega is in many parts of the valley the only 

 ground kept under cultivation, and the indigenous vegetation 

 there is of a quite distinct character. Instead of the Algarrobo, 

 we have the Willow and a small Composite tree, Tessaria kgitinia, 

 with leaves very like those of Salix cinerea, and soft brittle wood, 

 which is the common fuel at Lima and elsewhere on the coast, 

 where it is called Pajaro bobo. Less abundant than those two 

 trees are Buddleia ainericana, a pretty Cassia, two species of 

 Baccharis, two rampant Mimosae (one of them M. asperata}, 

 Muntingia Calalniru, and Cestntm hediondinum (called Yerba 

 Santa), of which only the two last grow to be trees of moderate 

 size, the rest being weak bushes or shrubs. Over trees and 

 bushes climb a half-shrubby Asclepiadea (Sarcostemma sp.), with 

 very milky stems and umbels of pretty white flowers, a Cissus, 

 a Passiflora, allied to P. fceiida, a pretty delicate gourd plant, and 

 a Mikania. 



It is usually only on the vega that we find any herbaceous 

 vegetation, except in the rainy years. There the Caria brava, 

 a (iynerium, with a stem 15 feet high and leafy all the way up, 

 and with smaller and less silky panicles than the other species, 

 grows in large patches. The huts of the Indians and Mestizos 

 in the suburbs of Piura have often nothing more than a single 

 row of Cana brava stems stuck into the ground for walK and 

 others laid hori/ontally over them for roof, affording, of course, 

 little protection from sun and wind, and none at all from the 

 rain, which happily falls so very rarely. 1 Along with it grow a 



1 It does not enter into the scope of this memoir to <K-si-ril>e the towns of 

 North Peru and the customs ol ih-'ir inhabitants, but it miidit leave .1 false 

 impression wen- I not to add that all the better class oi houses an a >>lidly 

 constructed as almost anywhere in South America. At Piura they have thick 

 walls of adobes, and are built round patios or courts, over which a\uiiiiL^ are 

 stretched in the heat of the day. ( dass windows, verandas, and l>al 

 are almost universal 



