phinx, and listening at her locked lips,... and to go
out in April and see them suddenly abloom is as though the lips of the
Sphinx should part and utter solemn words. A bunch of white flowers at
the tip of the obelisk, flowers springing white and wonderful out
of this dead, gaunt, prickly thing--is not that Nature's consummate
miracle, a symbol of resurrection more profound than the lily of the
fields."*

* Harriet Monroe, Atlantic Monthly, June, 1902.

Then there is the glorious ocotillo, waving its long, slender wands
from the ground-centre, each green with its myriad little lance-shaped
leaves, and bursting at the end into a scarlet flame of blossoms
dazzling in the burning sunlight. Near by springs up the Barrel cactus,
a forbidding column no one dares touch. A little farther is the "yant"
of the Pai Ute, with leaves fringed with teeth like its kind, the
Agaves. This is a source of food for the native, who roasts the
asparagus-like tip starting up in the spring, and he also takes the
whole head, and, trimming off the outer leaves, bakes it in pits,
whereby it is full of sweetness like thick molasses. The inner pulp is
dried in sheets and laid away. Near by, the Pinyon tree in the autumn
sheds its delicious nuts by the bushel, and meanwhile there are many
full, nutritious grass seeds, the kind called "ak" by the Pai Utes
almost equalling wheat in the size of its kernel. In the lowlands grows
the stolid mesquite tree, more underground than above, whose roots
furnish excellent firewood,--albeit they must be broken up with a sledge
hammer, for no axe will stand the impact. Near it may be seen huge
bunches of grass (or perhaps straw would describe it better), which
the white man gathers for hay with a huge hoe. Then there is the
ever-present, friendly sage-brush, miniature oak trees, with branch and
trunk, so beautiful. It grows, as a rule, about two feet high, but I
have seen it higher than my head; that is, at least six feet. Beneath
its spreading shade in the south lurks the Gila Monster, terrible
in name at any rate, a fearful object to look upon, a remnant of
antediluvian times, a huge, clumsy, two-foot lizard. The horned toad is
quite as forbidding in appearance, but he is a harmless little thing.
Here we are in the rattlesnake's paradise. Nine species are found along
the Mexican border; and no wonder. The country seems made for them,--the
rocks, cliffs, canyons, pitahayas, Joshuas, and all the rest of it