United States or Georgia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The pear trees extended, like green fences, their serried rows of prickle-laden leaves; the century-plants opened like a profusion of bayonets, blackish or salmon-red in color; the old agaves shot their stalks into the air straight as masts, which were topped by extended branches that gave them the appearance of telegraph poles.
There flourish the pecan, the hackberry, the black walnut, the wild china, with evergreen oaks, plums, and clustering grapevines; while in the sterile plain above are only seen those forms of the botanical world that truly indicate the desert various species of cactaceae, agaves, and yuccas the palmilla and lechuguilla, dwarf-cedars, and mezquites, artemisia, and the strong-smelling larrea, or "creosote plant."
But here was no forest, no thicket of young firs aromatic and springy, nothing but the harsher vegetation of a hard land where agaves, the maguey of Mexico, and their kin thrive, where the cactus is the characteristic growth. He'd be in luck to find some small pines or even the dry-looking sparse cedars of the locality.
I need hardly say that, as a matter of plain historical fact, neither cactuses nor agaves were known in Europe till long after Christopher Columbus had steered his wandering bark to the sandy shores of Cat's Island in the Bahamas.
Very little of the undulating grassy plain is enclosed; but near the town there are a few hedge-banks, covered with agaves, cacti, and fennel. November 14th. We left Monte Video in the afternoon. We slept at the house of my guide at Canelones. In the morning we rose early, in the hopes of being able to ride a good distance; but it was a vain attempt, for all the rivers were flooded.
Its walls and gates, its ornate houses, its fort and Sanmicheli tower, all set like a mosaic of jewels in a ring of myrtles, oleanders, and laurels, delighted our eyes; and the farther we went on the way to Spalato, keeping always by the glittering sea, the more beautiful grew the scene. The walls along our road were well-nigh hidden with agaves and rosemary.
But it is in deciding the question as to where they are to be laid up that the Colaptes shows his remarkable intelligence. In the forests where he lives are to be found aloes, yuccas, and agaves. When the agaves have flowered, the flower-bearing stem, two or three metres in length, shrivels, but remains standing for some time.
I say apparent dryness, for my hygrometric observations prove that the atmosphere of Cumana and Araya contains nearly nine-tenths of the quantity of watery vapour necessary to its perfect saturation. It is this air, at once hot and humid, that nourishes those vegetable reservoirs, the cucurbitaceous plants, the agaves and melocactuses half-buried in the sand.
It was certainly a wonderful and varied scene that we gazed at over the hammock rail, the glaring sun overhead, the vividly blue sea stretching up to the white beach in front of the busy-looking town and the verdant hills beyond, with white villas nestling amid the green, like Madeira, and big, gru-gru palms and agaves, with other odd, broad-foliaged plants to tell that we were in more outlandish latitudes; while, skimming over the glassy blue water, that turned to an emerald green in its depths and was so transparent that the sandy bottom could be seen, with various molluscs crawling about amongst the algas, were hundreds of boats of every description from the trim-built man-o'-war's cutter down to the slipper-like sampan and aboriginal coracle of as queer construction as the catamaran of the Coromandel coast or the war canoe of the Sandwich Islands.
Everything which I have said about the country near Maldonado is applicable to Monte Video; but the land, with the one exception of the Green Mount, 450 feet high, from which it takes its name, is far more level. Very little of the undulating grassy plain is enclosed; but near the town there are a few hedge-banks, covered with agaves, cacti, and fennel. We left Monte Video in the afternoon.
Word Of The Day