The Hill Of Calcareous Breccias, Which We Have Just Mentioned As Having Once Been An Island In The Ancient Gulf, Is Covered With A Thick Forest Of Cylindric Cactus And Opuntia.

Some of these trees, thirty or forty feet high, are covered with lichens, and are divided into several branches in the form of candelabra.

Near Maniquarez, at Punta Araya, we measured a cactus,* the trunk of which was four feet nine inches in circumference (* Tuna macho. We distinguish in the wood of the cactus the medullary prolongations, as M. Desfontaines has already observed.). A European acquainted only with the opuntia in our hot-houses is surprised to see the wood of this plant become so hard from age, that it resists for centuries both air and moisture: the Indians of Cumana therefore employ it in preference to any other for oars and door-posts. Cumana, Coro, the island of Margareta, and Curassao, are the parts of South America that abound most in plants of the nopal family. There only, a botanist, after a long residence, could compose a monography of the genus cactus, the species of which vary not only in their flowers and fruits, but also in the form of their articulated stems, the number of costae, and the disposition of the thorns. We shall see hereafter how these plants, which characterize a warm and singularly dry climate, like that of Egypt and California, gradually disappear in proportion as we remove from the coasts, and penetrate into the inland country.

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