The palms have disappeared, but in their place grow kindred forms that in many respects resemble them.

They are, in fact, the palms of the mountains.

I behold the great palmetto (_Chamcerops_), with its fan-like fronds standing out upon long petioles from its lofty summit; the yuccas, with their bayonet-shaped leaves, ungraceful, but picturesque, with ponderous clusters of green and pulpy capsules.

I behold the _pita_ aloe, with its tall flower-stalk and thorny sun-scorched leaves.

I behold strange forms of the cactus, with their glorious wax-like blossoms; the cochineal, the tuna, the opuntias--the great tree-cactus "Foconoztle" (_Opuntia arborescens_), and the tall "pitahaya" (_Cereus giganteus_), with columnar shafts and straight upright arms, like the branches of gigantic candelabra; the echino-cacti, too--those huge mammals of the vegetable world, resting their globular or egg-shaped forms, without trunk or stalk, upon the surface of the earth.
There, too, I behold gigantic thistles (_cardonales_) and mimosas, both shrubby and arborescent--the tree-mimosa, and the sensitive-plant (_Mimosa frutescens_), that shrinks at my approach, and closes its delicate leaflets until I have passed out of sight.