Page:Literary pilgrimages of a naturalist (IA literarypilgrima00packrich).pdf/124

 All these are growths of the bottom lands, the hollows among the sand dunes back of the town. Within some of these are little fresh ponds in which grow waterlilies and the usual aquatic plants of such places. Here amid the prevailing wildness are many little beauty spots which, could the Pilgrims have come to them before the winter frosts had wrecked the vegetation, might have tempted them to stay. Passing on down the Cape you soon leave these behind and get into the higher dunes on the narrowest part where vegetation has little chance for its life. Here for a mile or two one might well think himself in Sahara. The sands, blown hither and thither and piled in fantastic shapes by the winds, are as clean as those of the beaten sea beach, as free from all suspicion of humus.

Yet if you will cross Sahara in most any direction to the camel's-hump hills which are scattered over its border as if a caravan had become petrified there, you will find the humps sprouting vegetation, a vegetation that is sparse, perhaps, but to your astonishment is glossy and luxuriant of leaf. More than one of these mounds rep