Chap. VIII. NEAR EL PASO. 325 
families of the State of Chihuahua, erected this — in such a 
country — remarkably fine building, and provided it with 
good machinery. It needed considerable courage to choose 
such a home. The road over the adjacent hills is bad and 
unsafe. The drivers, even of the poorest bullock-carts, 
carry guns with their whips. The situation of the mill is 
wild and strange, marked by the most striking peculiarities 
of North Mexican nature. The mountains on each side 
the valley are rocky ridges, — bare, grey, and curiously 
formed. Alluvial terraces extend from their base into the 
valley, and, uniting with the rocks near the river, form a bar 
across the valley. The river rushes here with a strong 
current through the fallen rocks. A few old poplars, the 
only trees in the whole region, grow on its banks. But 
notwithstanding this absence of anything like masses of 
verdure, we find among these rocks and fragments a most 
varied, interesting, and beautiful flora. Among an almost 
infinite variety of low shrubs (as I have already described 
in the upper portion of the valley) rise clusters of the long 
green shoots of the Fouquiera. A tall yucca, with its broad 
sword-shaped leaves and naked stem, throws up its palm- 
shaped crown ; while here and there is seen the monstrous 
mass of a giant echinocactus. The creeping opuntia spreads 
over the stony ground, and small echinocacti peep up 
between rank mammillarias. Then a small agave, in 
bunches not larger than a lettuce, and called by the 
Mexicans Lechuguilla, or Wild Salad, covers the ground 
like grass. All these, stiff, bristling, and thorny, harmonize 
curiously with the stony soil and bare rugged mountains. 
But in the spring, when the Mezquite bushes are clothed 
with the delicate green of their fresh feathery foliage 
and brush-like yellow flowers ; when the gigantic blossom- 
shoot of the yucca is crowned with its hundreds of white 
