A YOUSG XATUMALIST. 319 



" You have forgotten to tell him," added TEncuerado, 

 " that the tender shoots of the tunero, baked under the ash- 

 es, will furnish us this evening with a most delicious dish." 



A little farther on, the prickly pears were succeeded by 

 another species called the Cierge (the Cactus cereus of sa- 

 vants). Several of these plants were growing with a sin- 

 gle stem, and measured from ten to twelve feet in height, 

 looking like telegraph poles ; others had two or three shoots 

 springing from them, which made them look still more 

 singular. A third species, creeping over the ground, added 

 much to the difficulty of our walking, and obliged us very 

 often to take long strides to avoid them. In spite of all the 

 care we could take, we scratched our limbs several times 

 against their sharp spines. 



I again took the lead for there was not room between 

 the cicrges to walk abreast and, climbing up a small hillock, 

 surveyed a wide prospect. Such a complete change could 

 not possibly have taken place in so short a time in any oth- 

 er country. More trees, more shrubs, more bushes ! Ev- 

 erywhere the cactus might be seen assuming twenty differ- 

 ent shapes round, straight, conical, or flattened, and really 

 seeming as if it delighted in assuming appearances so fan- 

 tastic as almost to defy description. Here and there the 

 cierges, standing side by side, seemed to vie with each oth- 

 er in height, sometimes attaining to as much as twenty to 

 thirty feet, while the young shoots resembled a palisade, or 

 one of those impenetrable hedges with which the Indians 

 who live on the plateau surround their dwellings. Farther 

 on, there were vast vegetable masses of a spherical shape, 

 covered with rose-colored, horny, and transparent thorns, 

 which displayed across our path all their huge rotundity, 

 really exhibiting nothing vegetable to the eye but their 

 color. Here and there, too, some creeping species, with 

 their branches full of thorns, formed a perfect thicket ; one 



