The Traveler’s Friend! This name sounds rather interesting, and upon examination _Echinocactus Covillei_ is found to merit his friendly title. If one gingerly cuts off the top of the plant, crushing the fleshy part into a pulpy mass with a handy stick, cool refreshing water is revealed, fit for drinking and sufficient for one person. This Bisnaga has proven a good friend to the desert wanderer, but it is Nature, the marvelous architect, who is our real friend, by providing an ingenious structure which enables this cactus to store water in its fleshy-ribbed stems which grow from one to five feet tall and a foot or so in diameter; thereby permitting it to thrive and blossom in the terrible heat of the desert, and during the long, long seasons of drought to save many an Indian and other desert traveler from dying of starvation or thirst out on the broad mesas in this land of blazing sunlight. Also, if you are in cactus country and should ever become lost on the desert, look for _Covillei_, for he always leans toward the southwest and when other signs fail you can depend upon him to guide you in the right direction. Many a lost Indian or Mexican has obtained water and directions from _Covillei_, the Traveler’s Compass, and thus has saved his life through knowledge of desert lore, while a stranger schooled in books but lacking the wisdom which comes from long association with desert life could easily lose himself in the arid wastes, only to perish anon. This Traveler’s Friend is a handsome fellow; the crimson and orange-red hues of the brilliant blossoms shade into the yellow and purple-red tints of the style and its branches, harmonizing with eight or nine pink and reddish spines and their translucent yellow tips, a splash of gay rainbow hues against the drab background of rocky, gravelly soil along the foothills of southern and western Arizona and out on the mesas of Northern Mexico. In old Mexico the natives still utilize this Bisnaga by making from it the delicious cactus candy which is so prized by tourists, and seized upon with delight as one of their first discoveries in the land of the cactus clan. Turk’s Head (_Echinocactus horizonthalonius_) _Southern Arizona, Northern Mexico, and Western Texas_