A bunch of white flowers at the tip of the obelisk, flowers springing white and wonderful out of this dead, gaunt, prickly thing--is not that Nature's consummate miracle, a symbol of resurrection more profound than the lily of the fields."* * Harriet Monroe, Atlantic Monthly, June, 1902.
Then there is the glorious ocotillo, waving its long, slender wands from the ground-centre, each green with its myriad little lance-shaped leaves, and bursting at the end into a scarlet flame of blossoms dazzling in the burning sunlight.

Near by springs up the Barrel cactus, a forbidding column no one dares touch.

A little farther is the "yant" of the Pai Ute, with leaves fringed with teeth like its kind, the Agaves.

This is a source of food for the native, who roasts the asparagus-like tip starting up in the spring, and he also takes the whole head, and, trimming off the outer leaves, bakes it in pits, whereby it is full of sweetness like thick molasses.

The inner pulp is dried in sheets and laid away.