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A species of small barrel-cactus about the size of a man's head, with fluted sides, or symmetrical vertical rows of small thorned lumps converging at the top of the "nigger-head," as they are sometimes called, grows in great numbers in crevices on the walls. The delicate "pin cushion" gathered in clusters of myriad small spiny balls.

There was something unearthly and spectral in his appearance; his hair and beard were wet; his eyes shot here and there in little points of fire; he was like a gnome, weirdly uncanny as he gestured and talked in his monotone while he watched the nigger-head bottom. When he had finished, he did not wait for an answer, but turned and led the way swiftly toward the range houses.

Our liquors are first rate, and no mistake; and although we is out of cigars, we have got some of the juiciest nigger-head that you ever seed." The miner, who appeared to exercise such sway over his comrades, edged his way through the crowd. "I came here," he said, "thinking that the duel feller had axed us to wet our whistles, but it 'pears that I am mistaken."

Already it had come to stand for the weak man's ultimate mile-post, the end of many journeys. The approach from the sea was easy, if twelve miles of boulder and bog, of swamp and nigger-head, of root and stump, can be called easy under the best of circumstances; but easy it was as compared with what lay beyond and above it.