April ia^9. 



KATER^S PEAK — BOTA^iY. 



201 



parative facility oflered by the water-course, was only impeded 

 by loose stones, which frequently yielded to the foot, and 

 rolled down the gully, to the great danger of those who fol- 

 lowed. The banks of the ravine were saturated with water, and 

 covered either with spongy moss, or matted with plants,'* which 

 afforded no assistance ; had it not therefore been for strag- 

 gling shrubs of arbutus, or veronica, and tufts of rushes, grow- 

 ing on the steeper parts, we should have had many a fall ; and 

 however unimportant we might think bruises and scratches, 

 a broken barometer would have been a serious accident, and 

 much care was required to avoid it. We had to leave the 

 bed of the torrent, when it became full of wood, and then our 

 difficulty increased much; for in many places we had to scramble 

 over the thickly-matted and interwoven branches of the stunted 

 bushes of beech which frequently yielded to our weight, and 

 entangled our legs so much, that it was no easy matter to extri- 

 cate ourselves. 



At the heiglit of one thousand feet, vegetation became much 

 more stunted ; we found the plants and shrubs of very dimi- 

 nutive size, consisting principally of the deciduous-leaved 

 beech, one plant of which, though not more than two inches 

 high, occupied a space of four or five feet in diameter, its 

 spreading branches insinuating themselves among wild cran- 

 berry, chamitis, donacia, arbutus, and escalonia, so closely 

 matted together, as to form quite an elastic carpet. For the 

 last two hundred feet, we walked over the bare rock, on which 

 no other vegetation was observed than lichens. The summit of 

 the peak is formed by a loose pile of green-stone rock, in which 

 the hornblende appears in very varied forms, sometimes in 

 large crystals, and again so small and disseminated, as to be 

 scarcely visible ; on the summit it is seen, in very long, narrow 

 ( ? filiform) crystals, and the feldspar predominating, gives it 

 a white appearance.-|* 



The only living creatures we saw were a solitary hawk and 



, * A species of Gunnera (Dysemore integrifolia, Banks and Solander), 

 and t\\Q green-stemmed Cineraria {Cin. leucanthema. Banks and So- 

 lander). t Nos. 283 to 286, in Geul. Soc. Museum. 



