FLORA OF PAYTA. 



45 



the base of the plateau and the beach there is ample 

 space for some mean streets. 



With several companions who were kind enough to 

 interest themselves in plant-hunting, I at once turned 

 towards the sea-beach at the south-western side of the 

 town, keeping along the base of the low cliffs that here 

 descend to the water's edge. The seaward face of the 

 cliffs is furrowed by numerous gullies, and in one of the 

 broadest of these I was delighted to observe numerous 

 stunted bushes well laden with crimson flowers. This 

 turned out to be Galvesia limensis, a plant found only 

 at a few spots in Peru, whose nearest but yet distant 

 European ally is the common snapdragon. In the 

 upper part of the same gully were the withered 

 remains of several other species, most of which have 

 been since identified. Emerging on the plateau, we 

 found ourselves on a wide plain, apparently unbroken, 

 leading up to a range of hills some fifteen or twenty 

 miles distant. Though we were here only five degrees 

 from the equator, and before we returned to the ship 

 the sun had risen as high as on a summer's noon in 

 England, the southerly breeze felt delightfully cool 

 and fresh, and at midday, under the vertical sun, the 

 temperature on board ship was not quite 75°. 



Vegetation, as I anticipated, was not entirely absent 

 from the plateau, but it was more scarce than I had 

 anywhere seen it, except in the tracts west of the 

 Nile above Cairo, where the drifting sands cove'rs up 

 and bury everything on the surface. In the northern 

 Sahara, about Biskra, where rain is much less infrequent 

 than here, vegetation, though scanty, is nearly con- 

 tinuous, and it is not easy to find spaces of several 



