and, in a few instances, to pluck, the brilliant flowers that line our path. Not much chance for the latter is afforded. Once too much, I found, was my getting out of the coach a third time, to gather, if possible, the root of a superb crimson cactus. The driver touched up his horses as I touched the ground, and seemed purposed to push on without me, although the ascent was then quite marked. But it is a law of these diligences never to stop for any thing, a law I respect, and have no desire to see abrogated or weakened. Yet these gorgeous blossoms were a temptation. Especially so were two cactuses, one a round ball, with bits of red flowers, and one a group of small and hidden balls, supporting each a large crimson cup. How can these terribly sharp balls and tubes, so full of spines, burst forth into colors so delicate and deep? For a flower is a fruit of these inner natures. Cut these bulbs, and you find them full of soft, firm, fine fibre, as of lace meshed in cream. They show that the soul of them is sweet. So some rough and thorny exteriors that are human, hide tenderest and grandest spirits. So, especially, does the thorny and self-denying life of faith and patience and sorrow burst forth into the blossoming of heaven. Other flowers abound of less grand style and color: a daisy of the tint of cream; another of yellow, streaked with brown; white daisies, larger and softer than our Northern skies produce; these stand among their cactus superiors in meek yet sweet humility.
The gorge grows in grandeur as you pass over this last ascending point, and begin a descent often leagues, almost thirty miles, to the city at its base. The sides of the cliffs are equally fantastic, now hollowed in, now rounded out, now capped with horizontal pillars, now buttressed with a bluff running a half mile out of its side, an enormous roll, but nothing to the wall it seems to support.
Soon, on the left, the steady outline is broken into three separate ranges. The first is short, not over a mile or two in length. It starts up sheer and unbroken from the bottom, a scarped wall of silver gray. On its centre and top two caps are set, of the same stratified rock, whiter than the bases below, of enormous size and
