366 CHARACTER OF VEGETATION. Book II. 
regions at the eastern base of the mountains which border 
the table-land to the west. It would be useless here to 
look for cacti and yuccas^ for agaves, dasyliriums, the 
mezquite bush, and the larrea, the long, thorny rods of 
the fouquiera, the prickly leafless koberlinia, the artemisias, 
chenopodiaceous shrubs, and the other characteristic plants 
of the chaparral region. Instead of this strange-looking 
vegetation, the high plains are covered with a thick carpet 
of the finest grass, the mountain sides and hilly slopes 
with groves and woods of evergreen oaks, giving a park- 
like appearance to the savannah, while the high peaks of 
the Sierra Madre are clothed with dark masses of pine 
forest. Steppes and deserts, and barren rocks, with their 
stiff prickly plants, and grey thorny shrubs, only appear 
again in the lower region of Sonora, at the western base of 
the sierra. 
The plain above the Canada del Fresno exhibits one 
of the characteristic scenes of northern Mexico, which, 
though seen hundreds of times, can never fail to strike the 
intelligent traveller with its peculiar beauty. Nature hides 
none of her charms here, and leaves nothing either to 
fancy or to feeling wherewith to adorn the sharply-defined, 
bare reality. No groups of trees — shading the soft, green 
turf — tempt thought to wander to the happiness of a peace- 
ful home. No stream or brook carries our imagination 
down the valley to the distant land its waters seek. No 
cloud floats over our head. The atmosphere here forms 
no portion of the landscape, — it is only the empty space by 
which it is bounded ; while the distant mountains enclose 
the picture so harmoniously, and so perfectly, that one 
forgets to think of what exists beyond them. It is the 
purely plastic beauty of the scene which affects the feelings 
so powerfully. A broad, flat plain, surrounded by bare 
