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As far as my eye can range, it rests only on flowers, on beautiful flowers! I am looking as on a tinted map, an enamelled picture brilliant with every hue of the prism. Yonder is golden yellow, where the helianthus turns her dial-like face to the sun. Yonder, scarlet, where the malva erects its red banner. Here is a parterre of the purple monarda, there the euphorbia sheds its silver leaf.
The Christian commanders arrived, and pitched their camp before the town of Monarda, a strong place, curiously fortified, and situated at the foot of the highest part of the Sierra Bermeja. Here they remained for several days, unable to compel a surrender. They were separated from the skirt of the mountain by a deep barranca, or ravine, at the bottom of which flowed a small stream.
Some of these old simples I am greatly fond of, and like to snip a leaf as I go by to smell or taste; but many of them, I here confess, have for me a rank and culinary odour as sage and thyme and the bold scarlet monarda, sometimes called bergamot.
Here may also be found the coarse-haired Asclepias tuberosa, with fiery red umbels, the strong-scented Monarda fistulosa, and an umbelliferous plant, the grass-like, spiculated leaves of which recall to mind the Southern Agaves, the Eryngo. Among these children of Nature rises the civilized plant, the Indian Corn, with its stalks nearly twelve feet high."