A YOUNG NATURALIST. 207 



or flattened, and really seeming as if it delighted in assuming 

 appearances so fantastic as almost to defy description. Here and 

 there the cierges, standing side by side, seemed to vie with each 

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

 thirty feet, whilst 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- 

 coloured, horny, and transparent thorns, which displayed across 

 our path all their huge rotundity, really exhibiting nothing vege- 

 table to the eye but their colour. Here and there, too, some 

 creeping species, with their branches full of thorns, formed a 

 perfect thicket ; one might almost have fancied that they were a 

 hundred-headed hydra. 



" We might almost imagine we were in a hot-house full of 

 rich-growing plants and golden-coloured flowers," said Sumi- 

 chrast to me. 



" Yes," I replied ; " but we must also imagine that we are 

 looking at them through the lens of a microscope. What would 

 a Parisian say if he saw this viznaga t " 



The plant I was pointing to was at least six feet in height and 

 three times that in circumference. 



" When I was a shepherd," said I'Encuerado, "I led my goats 

 into one of the plains where the viznagas grow. With my machete 

 I made a cut into one side of the plant, and my goats immediately 

 began to eat the pith with which it was filled. Gradually they 

 hollowed out a hole large enough for two or three of them to 

 enter at once, and this make- shift hut afforded me a first-rate 

 shelter against the rays of the sun and the night breezes." 



" Oh ! " cried Lucien, with enthusiasm, "if we have to camp 

 in these fields, we must have such a house." 



I again examined the landscape round us. There was nothing 

 whatever which betrayed the vicinity of man. Everywhere the 

 cadi spread out their variously-shaped flowers, which were nearly 

 all yellowish or pink. Above us was a fiery sky, in which nothing 

 seemed to move but a few vultures ; on the ground there were 

 hundreds of lizards in constant motion. 



