rises in fierce dignity like a monitor against the deep blue sky.  And the yuccas are quite as beautiful, with their tall central rods so richly crowned with bell-like blossoms, the fantastic Clistoyucca arborescens, or Joshua tree, being more in harmony with the archaic landscape than any other plant there.  As the traveller crosses one of the open forests of this tree, which is often twenty-five feet high, the more distant ones appear to beckon like some uncanny desert octopus yearning to draw him within reach of those scrawny arms.  The blossom of this monstrous growth is a revelation, so unexpected is it.  A group as large as one’s head, pure white, on the extremity of a dagger-covered bough, it is like an angel amidst bayonets.  The pitahaya, often more than thirty feet high and twelve to twenty-four inches diameter, is a fit companion for the Joshua, with an equally startling blossom.

“To go out on the desert ... and meet these cacti is like whispering into the ear of the Sphinx, 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