Introductory . 5 



of various green things. Generally speaking, it is only 

 by recent lava-fields, and the loftiest, bleakest peaks of 

 rock, that these energetic labourers are baffled, and 

 then it is only for a time. 



Over and over again, as Mr. Ball says, he was told 

 in different parts of the world that such and such a 

 spot was entirely devoid of vegetation, or, in other 

 words, a desert, and over and over again he found it to 

 be quite a mistake. On the so-called ' bare ' peaks of 

 the Dolomite Mountains he always found a 'fair 

 number ' of plants hidden in cracks and crevices ; even 

 at Suez, on the exposed, burnt-up face of the mountain 

 Djebel Attakah, he still found something, and in the 

 northern part of the great Sahara, though vegetation' 

 was scanty, it was difficult to find many yards together 

 that were actually bare. 



In fact, Mr. Ball had come to doubt the existence of 

 "deserts' altogether by the time he reached the 

 * rainless zone ' of Peru, and was once more told that 

 he would find no vegetation at all. Certainly this was 

 more barren than any part of the world which he had 

 seen yet, except indeed the drifting sands above Cairo ; 

 yet even here there were plants, stunted bushes in the 

 gullies, and tiny vegetables in the depressions where 

 the scanty rain rests longest ; but they wanted looking 

 for, as there was scarcely one so much as three inches 

 high. The labourers had done their best ; they had 

 prepared the soil, and they had sown, but they had 

 been hindered from growing anything like a luxuriant 

 crop by want of water. And at one place, Tocopilla, 

 they had been entirely baffled ; for here at last Mr. 

 Ball found his desert — an altogether barren spot 

 where not a single green thing was to be seen, and 



