Page:Life in Mexico vol 2.djvu/80

60 trees. There is one beautiful tree, with flowers like immense white lilies, and buds that look like shut lily blossoms in white wax.

Leaving these beautiful and fertile lands that adorn the slopes and bases of the hills, you mount again up the steep paths, and again you find the grass dried up, and no vegetation but stunted nopals or miserable-looking blue-green magueys. Yet sometimes in the most desert spot, a little sheltered by a projecting hill, you come upon the most beautiful tree, bending with rich blossoms, standing all alone, as if through ambition it had deserted its lowly sisters in the valley, and stood in its exalted station, solitary and companionless.

As for the names of these tropical trees, they are almost all Indian, and it is only botanically that they can be properly distinguished. There is the Floripundio, with white odoriferous flowers hanging like bells from its branches, with large pointed, pale-green leaves—the yollojochitl, signifying flower of the heart, like white stars with yellow hearts, which when shut have the form of one, and the fragrance of which is delicious—the izguijochitl, whose flowers look like small white musk roses—another with a long Indian name, which means the flower of the raven, and is white, red and yellow. The Indians use it to adorn their altars, and it is very fragrant as well as beautiful.

After six hours good riding, our guides pointed out to us the formidable barrancas at some distance, and expressed their opinion, that with great caution, our horses being very sure-footed, we might venture to