154 Rev. R. T. Lowe on the “‘ Chaparro” of Fuerteventura, 
Furnished by the kind and princely hospitality of Don Pedro 
Manrique de Lara y Cabrera with horses, guides, provisions, and 
every appliance for the expedition, I set out from Betancuria 
at 8 a.m. on the 6th of April, 1859; and after a long and 
weary ride of eighteen or twenty miles parallel with the coast, 
in a south-westerly direction from Rio Palmas, across an appa- 
rently endless succession of arid, stony, pathless wastes and dry 
Barrancos, attained at last the object of my search. We had 
just crossed, a little way above its mouth, the bed of a dry Bar- 
ranco, called the Barranco Gastey, two or three leagues beyond 
a place called Mésque; and weary and despairing of success, as 
we were now, at 2 P.M., entering upon another seemingly inter- 
minable, hot, barren, sandy waste, sloping westward down to 
the sea, without apparent trace of either animal or vegetable life, 
I was about to give the order to turn our horses’ heads home- 
wards, when all at once one of my guides exclaimed, “ Mira, 
Sefior, el Chaparro !” (‘Look, sir, the Chaparro!’’). On horseback 
I could perceive nothing but the usual loose grey stones that lie 
scattered everywhere on these sun-burnt, ever parched-up, dull, 
and dreary wastes; but jumping off, I found that some at least 
of what appeared such were really plants, and presently the dis- 
covery of flowering examples completed my surprise and satis- 
faction. Much of what had appeared so like round-headed 
stones covered with grey lichen, that on horseback it was scarcely 
possible to discern the difference, proved at once to be a plant, 
the object of my search, and a Convolvulus. 
Although the day was so far spent, and we had at least some 
twenty miles to retrace our steps, I remained more than half 
an hour examining the locality and taking descriptive notes 
from the plants i situ. They were pretty thickly scattered on 
the spot, but did not extend far, occupying a space of perhaps 
half a mile in breadth, and ending as abruptly as they had 
begun. Whilst I was thus exploring their characters and the 
limits of their place of growth, my guides were occupied in 
rooting up a few plants for specimens,—a work of no small dif- 
ficulty, owing to the excessive toughness and hardness of their 
stems and roots, though, warned of this peculiarity beforehand, 
we had brought a sort of pick-axe for the purpose. 
I rode on about a mile further, crossing another dry Barranco, 
remarkable for being lined on each side near the sea with fine 
tamarisk trees or bushes—the only green thing that I had seen 
for miles. On the sloping plain beyond this ravine, called the 
Plaga Biocho, I found a still larger patch of finer Chaparros. 
This spot could not be more than two or three leagues in a north 
or north-west direction from Chilegua, and near the origin or 
neck of the Jandia promontory. 
