Here, too, the potato (_Solanum tuberosum_) flourishes in its native soil; the pear and the pomegranate, the quince and the apple, are seen in the orchard; and the cereals of the temperate zone grow side by side with the _Cucurbitacece_ of the tropics.
I pass from one _valu_ into another, by crossing a low ridge of the dividing mountains.

Mark the change! A surface of green is before me, reaching on all sides to the mountain foot; and upon this roam countless herds, tended by mounted "vaqueros" (herdsmen).
I pass another ridge, and another _valid_ stretches before me.

Again a change! A desert of sand, over the surface of which move tall dun columns of swirling dust, like the gigantic phantoms of some spirit-world.

I look into another _valle_, and behold shining waters-- lakes like inland seas--with sedgy shores and surrounded by green savannas, and vast swamps covered with reeds and "tulares" (bulrush).
Still another plain, black with lava and the scoriae of extinct volcanoes--black, treeless, and herbless--with not an atom of organic matter upon its desolate surface.
Such are the features of the plateau-land--varied, and vast, and full of wild interest.
I leave it and climb higher--nearer to the sky--up the steep sides of the Cordilleras--up to the _tierra fria_.
-- ---------------------------------------------------------------------- I stand ten thousand feet above the level of the ocean.

I am under the deep shadows of a forest.