CACTUS TRIBE. 201 



flowers are splendid, and astonish the passer-hy 

 with their gorgeous tints, and the magnificent un- 

 folding of their petals. They often grow to a great 

 size in sandy deserts, where no cool showers refresh 

 the burning soil, where no streams are heard, and 

 where the heated sand is intolerable even to the 

 camel's foot. Yet there the melon cactus presents a 

 cool and copious draught to the fainting traveller, 

 and has often saved him from a lingering and painful 

 death. It grows in the deserts of the East, and of 

 Sahara, of the Pampas also, and in places where no 

 other vegetable could exist. Travellers from the 

 parched plains of Cumana and New Barcelona, speak 

 of some gigantic species, at least thirty feet in height, 

 whose upright and angular stems, if such they may be 

 called, appear in the distance like massive columns. 

 But still more striking is their effect when seen at 

 sunset. The brilliant glow of the horizon then im- 

 parts a corresponding hue to the huge vegetable 

 masses which cast a lengthened shadow on the 

 ground, and he who had never witnessed such a 

 spectacle might readily imagine that he saw before 

 him fluted columns and massy pillars, with huge 

 blocks of stone, and magnificent standing candelabra, 

 which seemed destined in by-gone days to light up 

 some hall of state. 



Were it possible to embrace in one comprehensive 

 glance the mighty range of the vast Cordilleras, what 

 an exquisite variety of shrubs and trees, of herbs 

 and flowers, would be everywhere conspicuous ; of 

 animals too, for the creatures concerning which I 

 have just spoken, the llama, and vicugna, the 

 guanaco, and alpaca, with numerous others of differ- 



