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The orange trees were almost breaking down under their load of fruit, which scarcely paid for the gathering. The "nopal" or prickly pears have been rooted up, as well as most of the vines and figs. A few young nopals have been planted, and some preparation made for experiments in cochineal.
The unlucky captive ran with great swiftness, but his pursuers bounded after him like tigers. Thanks to the start which he had had, he cleared safely a part of the distance which separated him from the river, but the stones which cut his feet and the sharp thorns of the nopals soon caused him to slacken his pace, and one of the Indians rushed up and made a furious thrust at him with his lance.
After having proceeded three quarters of an hour along a shore covered by the tide we were joined by the negro, who carried our provision. Uneasy at not seeing us arrive, he had come to meet us, and he led us through a wood of nopals to a hut inhabited by an Indian family. We were received with the cordial hospitality observed in this country among people of every tribe.
The bushes the thorny nopals rose before him like accusing phantoms, opposing his advance with extended arms; a cold perspiration stood on his brow, but cupidity, stronger than fear, spurred him on towards the valley, and he began to laugh at his own apprehensions.
The snowy exterior of the whitewashed church with its cool arcade and its walled terraces crowned with nopals, reminded him of an African mosque. It had more resemblance to a fortress than a temple. Its roofs were concealed by the upper edge of the walls, a kind of redoubt over which fire-locks and catapults had frequently peered. The tower was a military turret still crowned with merlons.
Not a native tree was there not one flower of France; nothing hut exotic plants, gum-trees, gourds, cotton-woods, cocoa and cacao, mangoes, bananas, palms, a baobab, nopals, cacti, Barbary figs well, you would believe yourself in the very midst of Central Africa, ten thousand leagues away.
When day broke we had left the railroad, and were jolting along through a parched sandy plain, thinly covered with acacias, nopals, and other kinds of cactus, bignonias, and the great tree-euphorbia, with which we had been so familiar in Cuba, with its smooth limbs and huge white flowers. At last we reached the first hill, and began gently to ascend. The change was wonderful.
There the Indians cultivate great plantations of Nopals, and spread the insects over them with immense care, even removing them, and carrying them up into the mountains in baskets when the rainy season begins in the plains, and bringing them back when it is over.
But what made us notice these Nopals was, that they were covered with what looked like little white cocoons, out of which, when they were pressed, came a drop of deep crimson fluid. This is the cochineal insect, but only the wild variety; the fine kind, which is used for dye, and conies from the province of Oajaca, miles off, is covered only with a mealy powder.
She owned a house in Naples, at Posilipo, that is a villino, in pink stucco, a dainty little place with fig trees, nopals and parasol pines, that ran in a grove down a steep promontory to the sea I They would fish in the bay there it was as smooth and blue as a looking-glass!
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