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I was yet screened in the thicket of cacti; but I saw that my hiding-place would soon be pierced by the eyes of the subtle savages; and dropping upon my hands and knees, I crept into the cliff. On reaching it, I found myself close to the mouth of a cave, a small shaft of the mine, and into this I at once betook myself. The place into which I had crawled was of irregular outlines.
It led to another cleft of rock, where, beating down the briers, I looked down a chasm which ended, thirty feet below, in a whole brake of cacti. The scent of the crushed plants was divine: and I crushed a plenty of them.
In the Cordillera, where Masterman describes the scenery as most beautiful, the cacti grow, bristling with spines, and loaded with delicate white flowers; as also the wild pineapple, which covers the ground, its serrated leaves, of a bright scarlet in the centre, and barred, all straggling from the root.
Some 400 and more persons were dumped off at Topolobampo into the brush and cacti, and over fifty per cent of these were women, children, and aged persons, who became at once a heavy, constant, and ever increasing care to those who were physically capable of meeting the requirements of the movement.
After entering the Parana, the voyager sails for hundreds of miles up the mighty stream between lofty clay-banks of a red colour; sometimes absolutely perpendicular, and at others consisting of broken masses covered with cacti and mimosa-trees.
Tutt passed a restless night, dreaming, when he slept at all, of mines from which poured myriads of pieces of yellow gold, of gushers spouting columns of blood-red oil hundreds of feet into the air, and of old-fashioned locomotives dragging picturesque trains of cars across bright green prairies studded with cacti in the shape of dollar signs.
The settlers expressed their satisfaction at the captain's plan, as they gazed at the richly coloured woods which covered the sides of the surrounding hills, at the purple blooming quaresma, the snake-like cacti, and the gorgeous flowering parasites hanging down even from the jagged and precipitous sides of the Sugar Loaf, and the rich verdure starting forth from every nook and crevice of the fantastically shaped rocks.
On La Jolla Scenic Road, I saw more exotic flora: tall, cedar-like trees, plants with huge vein-covered leaves, and cacti with yellow flowers and spiny needles. I did not know their names. "At last," boomed Atmananda, pointing to a large shrub which drooped like a wilted phallus. "We have found the fabled swaaaanso bush!"
These were filled with an astonishing array of objects: bottles, vials, alembics, retorts, test tubes, decanters, cages, boxes, jars, pots, skulls, books, snake skins, wands, waxen images, pins and needles, locks of hair, crystal balls, playing cards, dice, witch-hazel forks, tails of animals, spices, bottles of ink in several colors, clay pipes, a small brass scale, compasses, measuring cups, a piggy bank which squealed off and on in a peevish way, balls of string and ribbons, a pile of magazines called The Warlock Weekly, a broken ukulele, little heaps of powder, colored stones, candle ends, some potted cacti, and an enormous cash register.
The difference between Mark Twain and Luther Burbank is this: Mark hoes his spiritual acreage in bed, while Luther Burbank works in the garden. Luther produces spineless cacti, while Mark gives spineless men a vertebra. Mark makes us laugh, in order that he may make us think. The last time I saw H. H. Rogers was in his office at Twenty-six Broadway.
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