We were three hours before we arrived at Laguna. This town is only 5,130 toiſes diſtant from St. Croix; but the road thither is very fatiguing, as it aſcends for the greater part of the way. The place is meanly built, and very thinly inhabited. We were informed that at leaſt one half of its inhabitants conſiſts of monks.
On our way to Laguna we paſſed over ſome barren mountains, which were covered with a variety of plants of a luxurious growth. Amongſt others we noticed the euphorbia canarienſis, the euphorbia dendroides, the cacalia kleinia, the cachis opuntia, &c. Theſe plants, as they derive their nouriſhment almoſt entirely from the atmoſphere, thrive very well in ſpite of the ſterility of the abrupt precipices on which they grow. When we deſcended into the ſmall plain on which the town ſtands, we remarked that the mould produced from the corruption of the vegetables, and waſhed down from the ſurrounding mountains by the rain, anſwers a very uſeful purpoſe in fertilizing this little ſpot of ground, ſo that it yields abundance of corn, Indian wheat, millet, and other eſculent plants.
I here obſerved a ſpecies of the periploca, which I had formerly diſcovered during my travels in the Levant. I have given an account of it in the ſecond decade of my deſcription of the plants
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