As far as the eye could reach these prickly plants rose higher and higher; thick leaves growing from other leaves obstructed the path, sometimes catching on Jenny's dress. In places they grew to such a great height that the children seemed to be as much lost here as if they were in the woods, and no one could find them there. So they kept threading their way through them, now to the right and then to the left, but careful always to go from the town. Sometimes between the cacti they could see on the horizon the blue mountains of Santa Ana. They went to the mountains. The heat was great. Gray-colored locusts chirped in the cacti; the sun's rays poured down upon the earth in streams; the dried-up earth was covered with a network of cracks; the stiff leaves of the cacti seemed to soften from the heat, and the flowers were languid and half-wilted. The children proceeded, silent and thoughtful. But all that surrounded them was so new that they surrendered themselves to their impressions, and for the moment forgot even their weariness. Jenny's eyes ran from one bunch of cacti to another; again she looked to the farther clusters, saying to her friend: "Is this the wilderness, Orso?" But the desert did not appear to be deserted. From the farther clumps came the calling of the male quail, and around sounded the different murmurs of clucking, of twittering, of the ruffling of feathers: in a word, the divers voices of the small inhabitants of the plains. Sometimes there flew up a whole covey of quail; the gaudy-topped pheasants scattered on their approach; the black squirrels dived into their holes; the rabbits disappeared in all directions; the gophers were sitting on their hind legs beside their holes, looking like fat German farmers standing in their doorway.