Through the Giant Cactus Forest 115 



wonder at the vividness of the green. There 

 were three, or four, dominant giant forms which 

 completely filled the eye and the imagination, 

 the saguaro, 1 the hecho or saguesa, an allied 

 form of Cerens, the pitahaya (Cereu* thurberi), 

 and the cina. The pitahaya is perhaps the most 

 colossal, as its individual columns are almost as 

 large as that of the sagnardo, and there are 

 numbers of them rising from a single root near 

 the ground, and bending upward in graceful 

 columnar shapes, as many as fifty or sixty, form- 

 ing a compact vase shape of assembled trees, of a 

 dark ribbed green, a splendid object against the 

 deep blue of the sky, the line of which was cut 

 and broken by myriads of them, as far as one 

 could see, a rolling, billowy sea of masts, 

 columns, thirty, or forty feet in height and as 

 many in diameter. 



Almost as striking was the saguesa which rose 

 in colossal columns from three to ten in number, 

 typical trees of the arid regions whose develop- 

 ment illustrates a marvellous adaptation to cir- 

 cumstances, and a maximum power to store 

 water in its vast fibrous and pulpy interior. 

 This is well illustrated by the comparison of a 

 living and dead cactus tree where the great tree, 

 or cluster of trees, seems to have shrunk into 

 a woody skeleton, and bunches of slats, used by 

 the natives of the Sonoran region in a variety 



1 Pronounced SO-IOOT'-TO. 



