138 . NOTES OF A NATURAl^TST. 



the follower of any other pursuit ; his only difficulty 

 being that, if ignorant of the healing art, he cuts a 

 poor figure when applied to for medical advice. 



Quite unnoticed, I made my way through the long 

 street of Coquimbo, and, at the first favourable oppor- 

 tunity, turned up a lane leading to the slopes above 

 the town. The first plant that I saw, close to the 

 houses, was a huge specimen of the common European 

 Marriibinni viilgare, grown to the dimensions of a 

 much-branched bush four or five feet high. It is 

 common in temperate South America, reaching a 

 much greater size than in Europe. The season was, 

 of course, very unfavourable, the condition of the 

 vegetation being very much what may be seen at the 

 corresponding season — late autumn — in Southern 

 Spain, before the first winter rain has awakened the 

 dormant vegetation of the smaller bulbous-rooted 

 plants. Nevertheless, I found several very curious 

 and rare plants still in flower, some of them known 

 only from this vicinity, and among them a dwarf 

 cactus, only three or four inches in height, with com- 

 paratively large crimson flowers just beginning to 

 expand. 



At length, on the morning of May 9, the voyage 

 came to an end as we slowly steamed into the harbour 

 of Valparaiso, which, with the large amount of shipping 

 and the conspicuous floating docks, gives an impres- 

 sion of even greater importance than it actually pos- 

 sesses. The modern town, built in European fashion, 

 with houses of two and even three floors above the 

 ground, on the curved margin of the bay partly 

 reclaimed from the sea, and the older town, chiefly 



