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Show 124 BY PATH AND TRAIL. c& awalla, the white scorpion, the arena centipede, lizards and poisonous spiders." The sun beat down upon the deadly silence, upon the dull gray floor of the desert where the bunched blades of the yucca bristled stiff in the hot, sandy waste. But before coming here I had heard of another and more wonderful life than the reptile existence dwelt upon by my friend. There are times when torrential storms of rain rage fiercely among the mountains bordering this arid land or a drifting cloud loaded with water strikes a towering peak. When these things happen, rivers of water flow madly down the furrows worn in the face of the great hills, and, hitting the desert, separate into sheets of liquid refreshment which give life and beauty to desolation and aridity. They come, says the inspired writer, by the command of God, " to satisfy the desolate and waste ground and to cause the seed in the parched earth to spring forth." Then the ashen white waste is all aglow with myriad blossoms, and the desert sands are covered with a most beautiful carpet of wonderful flowers for many of which the science of botany has no name. Of all these plants that bloom in this vale of Hinom, perhaps, the most pleasing to the eye are the flowers of the cacti, and the rapidity with which their dry and a. p-parently dead stalks throw out beautiful blossoms after their roots are watered, is one of the marvels of the des ert. The cacti of La Pradera are an annual manifesta tion of the realism of death and resurrection and, as the plants come into fullest bloom in early spring, this desert at the time of Easter is one vast circular meadow where the rarest and most beautiful flowers have risen from their graves as if to glorify the resurrection of their |