The next morning we were again off early for our longest journey, that on to Rayray Guddy, where food would be procurable for horse and man, neither one nor the other being obtainable at Guinea-fowl Plain, where there is no commissariat station. We had carried our own food, and a small portion of grain for the horses; but they would have fared very badly had we not met some natives in the pass with a bundle of hay, and done a little barter with them for rice. The valley for the first twelve or fourteen miles from Guinea-fowl Plain greatly resembled in its general features that we had passed the day previously, but the vegetation became more varied and interesting every mile. We now had great trees of ivy, we had the evergreen oak, and occasionally gigantic tulip-trees. We had great numbers of a tree, or rather large shrub, of the name of which I am ignorant; its leaves more resembled the sprays of the asparagus when it has run far to seed than any other foliage I know, but the growth of the shrub was more like a yew. Upon its branches were vast quantities of a parasite resembling the mistletoe, whose dark-green leaves afforded a fine contrast to the rather bluish tint of the tree. Climbing everywhere over the trees, and sometimes almost hiding them, were creepers of various kinds; on the ground grew vast quantities of the aloe. There were, too, numerous cacti of various kinds, some thick and bulky, others no thicker than a lady’s little finger, and growing like a creeper over the trees. But, strangest of all, upon the hill-sides grew an immense plant, or rather tree, of the cactus tribe, which I had never seen before. It started by a straight stem fifteen or twenty feet high, and thicker than a man’s body. This branched out into a great number of arms, which all grew upwards, and to just the same height, giving it a strange and formal appearance, exactly resembling a gigantic cauliflower. I believe its name is _Euphorbia candalabriensis_, but do not at all vouch for this. Some of the mountain slopes were quite covered with this strange tree, but as a general thing it grew singly or in pairs. The tulip-trees were superb; they grew generally in rocky places, and with their huge twisted trunks, and glossy green leaves, and limbs more than a hundred feet long, they were studies for a painter.