During the droughts ranchmen singe the thorns off its
leaves, using a flame-throwing machine, easily portable by a
man on foot, fed from a small gasoline tank. From Central
Texas on down into Central America prickly pear acts as
host for the infinitesimal insect called cochineal, which
supplied the famous dyes of Aztec civilization.

A long essay might be written on prickly pear. It weaves
in and out of many chronicles of the Southwest. A. J. Sowell,
one of the best chroniclers of Texas pioneer life, tells in his
life of Bigfoot Wallace how that picturesque ranger captain
once took one of his wounded men away from an army surgeon
because the surgeon would not apply prickly pear
poultices to the wound. In _Rangers and Pioneers of Texas_,
Sowell narrates how rattlesnakes were so large and numerous
in a great prickly pear flat out from the Nueces River that
rangers pursuing bandits had to turn back. Nobody has
written a better description of a prickly pear flat than
O. Henry in his story of "The Caballero's Way."

People may look at prickly pear, and it will be just prickly
pear and nothing more. Or they may look at it and find it
full of significances; the mere sight of a prickly pear may
call up a chain of incidents, facts, associations. A mind that
can thus look out on the common phenomena of life is rich,
and all of the years of the person whose mind is thus stored
will be more interesting and full.

Cabeza de Vaca's _Narrative_, the chronicles of A. J.
Sowell, and O. Henry's story are just three samples of