Year: 1888
Type: book
Abstract: 4)does duty in great part as a sewer, besides furnishing the only water supply.From Tacna, the route lay seven days by mule, to La Paz.At nine thousand feet, 170 south latitude,* the veg¬ etation is sufficient to afford pasturage for the llama.At twelve thousand feet we are upon the table-land, which is, in part at least, volcanic, and at first thickly covered with loose rounded stones.Farther on it becomes sandy and rocky by turns.We cross many superimposed small ranges, and skirt the bases of much greater ones.The landscape is much like that of our own south-western plateau, except that there is less grass.What fre¬ quently appears like a grassy plain, proves to be covered with plants like dwarf Hypochceris or Perezia, only an inch or two in height, and presenting a green cushion of needles in the form of spines terminating the erect linear leaves.Numerous species of Adesmia, rarely rising above a foot from the ground, and often very closely prostrate, cover much of the country.Near the eastern verge of this tabie-land, in a basin two thousand feet deep, with nearly vertical walls of clay or gravel, is situated La Paz, at an elevation of about eleven thousand feet.Here I spent some two weeks during the months of February, March and April, collecting one hundred and fifty or more species.This was during the latter half of the rainy season, when the walls of the basin, and the gravelly and rocky hills along the La Paz River to the south, were richly clothed with plants in flower.The remainder of the time during this period was passed across the range in Yungas.Returning early in April to the coast, I proceeded to Valparaiso, where three months were spent.Here the season is earlier, and winter was just setting in when I arrived.A winter there is about the same as in northern Florida, the orange surviving, but not thriving.Some twenty-five or thirty stray specimens were found in flower before I returned to La Paz.It being then early in June, I found a dry and wintry season prevailing, with a most dreary prospect for a collector.Fora longtime business detained me in the city, save for a few short excursions across the mountains, and one long stay in the province of Yungas, made, unfortunately, at an unfavorable season for collecting.Just as the rains were beginning the next Janu-* Distances, latitudes and altitudes a,re given approximately.W
Language: English
Subfield: Plant Science
Domain: Life Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2793484873