# Travels in Mexico and life among the Mexicans/Chapter 11

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XI.
FROM COAST TO CAPITAL.
MEXICO lies at the meeting-place of two zones,—the temperate and the torrid; and from its geographical position, combined with its varying altitudes, possesses a greater variety of soil, surface, and vegetation than any equal extent of contiguous territory in the world. Basking in the sunshine of the tropics, her head pillowed in the lap of the North, her feet resting at the gateway of the continents, her snowy bosom rising to the clouds, she rests serene in the majesty of her might. She guards vast treasures of gold and silver, emeralds and opals adorn her brow, while the hem of her royal robe, dipped in the seas of two hemispheres, is embroidered with pearls and the riches of ocean.
Mother of Western civilization! cradle of the American race! a thousand years have been gathered into the sheaf of time since her first cities were built. When the Norsemen coasted our Northern shores, she had towns and villages, and white-walled temples and palaces. When the Pilgrims landed on Plymouth Rock, a hundred years had already passed since the soldiers of Cortes had battled with the hosts of Montezuma. Three centuries, and more, have rolled by since her conquest, and into the treasury of Spain, through this same city of the True Cross, she has poured golden streams and silver floods of royal revenue. Her ten millions of people occupy one million square miles of territory, having a length of 1,800, a breadth of 800, and a coast line of 5,500 miles.
While yet upon her coast, let us glance at the country we have come to visit. Rising above the limit of her mountains clothed in snow, let us take a bird's-eye view of this great "central continent." ​The mountain chain that is so depressed at the Isthmus of Tehuantepec divides into two as it reaches Mexican territory, forming the eastern and western Cordilleras that run along either coast. These great mountain ranges, then, guard an immense central plateau, supporting some of the highest pinnacles on this continent.
Between the bases of these ranges and the coasts there is a broad expanse of comparatively level land, known as the savanas, or llanos. This portion of the country is hot, and in the main unhealthy. The great plains are characterized by general aridity in the dry season, and are partially submerged in the season of rains. Covered with coarse grass, they are the resort of great herds of cattle, but their vegetation consists principally of stunted, prickly, and thorny trees. Like oases in this grassy desert are the spots fertilized by some stream or lake, where the trees and plants are of the tropics, and all the fruits of the hot zone are produced in abundance: such as cacao and coco, vanilla and spices, sugar-cane, bananas,
​oranges, and mangos. To impress upon one the character of the vegetation of the coast, a group of coco palms must be imagined, waving their long leaves wildly in the wind or shining like gold in the sun. Essentially a littoral product, the coco-palm is rarely found far inland, and the equally beautiful and tropical plant, the banana, leaves it behind, in the advance up the mountains, as the foot-hills are reached.
These plains are not level, but rise from a low altitude above the sea to a height of two thousand feet and more; then the hills set their feet upon them and vegetation radically changes. This coast section is called the tierra caliente, or hot country; but with our entrance into the hills we pass gradually to a cooler and
more salubrious climate, called by the natives tierra templada, the temperate region. Here, indeed, Nature manifests herself in her grandest productions; vegetation begins to be profuse; the huts of the natives, the great and towering trees, the rocks, the entire surface of the soil, are covered with gay flowers and ​luxuriant vines: orchids, oleanders, roses, honeysuckles, and convolvuli "make glad these solitary places," and tall yuccas, palms, and tree-ferns make them picturesque.
Rising higher and higher, the eye is bewildered by the vast number of vegetable forms that are massed upon the trees, the wild pines, air-plants, and hosts of ferns, bignonias with tints of sea-shells, orchids with spikes of blossoms, dragon plants, and an entire world of creepers and parasitic vines, unknown to any but the skilled botanist. Thus we pass through a zone unknown to us of the North, that has also forms not found in the low tropics. It is called the "temperate region" because of its delightful climate and equable temperature; but it not only combines the vegetation of two zones, but also the heat and moisture of the lowlands with the cool breezes and salubrious atmosphere of the temperate country.
Having traced the lapping of the two girdles in other places, in the lesser islands of the West Indies, and having noted and admired the blending of the two zones in this middle ground, I had long ago given this region (in imagination, before it passed under my eyes) the name of Tropic Border-land. The flowers here do not lose their scent, as some imagine; the birds are tuneful,—though some would have us believe to the contrary,—and the annoying insects less abundant than below. Paradise, if it can be located on this earth, will occupy a position in the tierra templada, in some belt half-way up a tropic mountain, whether in Mexico or in South America, in the West Indies or in the Himalayas, where altitude confers all the favors resulting from a change of country in other lands. There is no deadly disease here, as in the coast country; at an elevation of three thousand feet above the sea there is little danger from the vomito, and, except for local causes, other fevers seldom molest the inhabitants.
As far up as four thousand feet the sugar-cane, coffee, rice, tobacco, and banana may be raised; and all the fruits of the world, both the new and the old, may be produced here in greater or less perfection. Beyond this, vegetation is less luxuriant; the grains of the Old World, as wheat and barley, flourish best ​at an altitude of six thousand feet; here the pines commence, though oaks were met with two thousand feet below, while corn, the great tasselled chieftain of the West, being on indigenous soil, has marched with us all the way from the coast, and climbed with us up the sides of the mountains. At about seven thousand feet, the great plains are reached that lie between the eastern and western Cordilleras, and cover an area of some fifteen hundred miles in length by five hundred in breadth. Here cactus and aloe, cypress and cedar, proclaim another zone, the tierra fria, or "cold country," where not a trace of tropical vegetation exists except in the equivocal cacti and maguey. Shooting above the plateau, the great volcanoes, Orizaba, Ixtaccihuatl, and Popocatapetl, lift their hoary heads high into the clouds, and if we ascend their sides to their summits, we shall have traced vegetation to its last limit,—from the palms, bananas, and sugar-cane of the heated coast, through the oranges, apples, peaches of the temperate belt, the wheat, barley, aloes, the oaks, pines, and hemlocks of the tierra fria, to the last starry cryptogam that flecks the borders of the eternal snows!
In no country in the world can you pass so rapidly from zone to zone,—from the blazing shores of the heated tropics to the region of perpetual winter, from the land of the palm and vine to that of the pine and lichen,—for in twenty hours this can be accomplished, and the traveller may ascend a snow peak with the sands of the shore still upon his shoes.
​vegetation, and the tropic night manifests itself, not only in the brilliancy of its stars, but in the myriads of its fire-flies. These insects of the night may remind us of the story related by the Spanish chroniclers, of the army of Narvaez, which was put to flight by an apparition of these fire-flies, they mistaking them for the lights of an approaching enemy.
The ascent commences almost at the very gates of Vera Cruz, and at the station of Tejeria, a place noted in the history of Mexico, nine and one half miles distant, we are one hundred feet above the sea. There are no villages on the plains, and few houses except the ranchos of the cattle-owners, and the hamlet of Purga, which reminds us emphatically of the drastic cathartic properties of the indigenous jalap. Passing through Soledad, a hamlet of a few hundred people, the first station of any importance is Paso del Macho, containing fifteen hundred inhabitants, and situated 1,560 feet above Vera Cruz. Three miles beyond this station we cross the bridge of San Alejo, 318 feet in length; at Chiquihuite, another, 220 feet long; and at Atoyac roll over the famous bridge of that name, having a length of 330 feet, spanning the Atoyac River, which empties at the port of Vera Cruz, fifty-three miles distant. Like the plains, which are intersected by deep barrancas, at the bottom of which, in the rainy season, flow turbid rivers, these lower hills are cut up by numerous ravines, rich in all the charming vegetation of the tropics, but offering almost insuperable obstacles to railway construction. Beyond Atoyac the ascent grows steeper, the grades continually increasing, and the course of the railway necessarily becoming circuitous, in order to overcome it. Rank grow the wonderful plants on either side, tumultuous rush the rivers from mountains clothed in verdure, each mile adding, if possible, to the wealth of the vegetable kingdom concentrated here, until it reaches perfection in the valleys lying about Cordova, twenty-seven hundred feet above the sea and sixty-five miles from the Gulf. It is here that the traveller first allows himself to take a long, free breath, without fear of drawing in the germs of yellow fever or malarial disease. The scenery delights him, and he would gladly stop awhile in this region. ​but he has a through ticket for Mexico and cannot; and at the time of his departure from the country he forgets Cordova until he reaches it again in passing through, and then regrets, too late, that he has not given it a few days' time.
The town of Cordova, being the central portion of the coffee region of the east coast, situated amidst scenery that may be taken as typical of this zone, should not be passed by without a brief description. It was founded in 1618, becoming at one time a very flourishing city, with numerous sugar haciendas, as well as numberless coffee estates; but it has greatly declined in importance. The entire coffee product amounted, in 1881, to little more than 20,000 arrobas, of twenty-five pounds each, while the amount of tobacco is estimated at from 150,000 to 200,000 arrobas. The town lies nearly a mile from the pleasant station on the Mexican railroad, with which it is connected by an excellent tramway, passing through gardens and coffee groves. The central plaza, though small, is an exquisite little garden of palms, flowers, banana plants, and orange and lime trees, kept in excellent order. It has a monument, in the centre of a large basin containing the water of the town, in memory of the patriots of Cordova who fought in the revolution against Spanish dominion; it is intersected by smooth walks, and has elegant iron seats at convenient stations. A large church opposite, though evidently of ancient date, is being repaired and somewhat modernized.
The broad open space about the plaza is used as a market, there being no other, and here the market men and women sit squatted on the stone pavement. Sunday is the great market day, for all the Indians come in from adjacent villages and take possession of the square. Many of them are pure Indians, and dressed in peculiar costumes, each tribe or village sporting a different color. They meet amicably, and generally get through the day very well; but it is when going home at night, with their skins full of mescal, or poor rum, that trouble occurs, and rarely a Sunday passes without several deaths.
​sequence of our line of travel, the results of my observations in the coffee district. The coffee region of Mexico is much more extensive than is generally supposed, extending from the coast into the hills, even so high up as five thousand feet above the sea. Though the plant grows well along the coast, (as witness Liberia, where it springs up almost at the water's edge,) it flourishes best at an altitude of from one thousand to three thousand feet. This is in sections that are well supplied with rains, for warmth and moisture, so necessary to all vegetation, are required by the coffee in a greater degree than by other plants. From the fact that the elevated districts are more salubrious than the lower, and that the best coffee is produced at the highest altitudes,—within a certain limit,—we find the largest groves among the hills and mountains.
Very fortunately, at the commencement of my investigations, I fell in with an extremely well-informed gentleman, Mr. Hugo Finck, who had resided here nearly twenty years, a naturalist of deep and inquiring mind, speaking four languages, thoroughly acquainted with the whole coast and mountain country of the Gulf, and an old "coffee raiser," besides. His plantation lies about two miles from town, reached by a road in a not exactly delightful condition. I might remark here that the roads of Mexico are, as a rule, in a horrible state. The government relies so much upon the railroads to connect all important places that the carriage roads and bridle paths are neglected. Take one of our country lanes, cut ditches across it, dig deep pits in it, demolish a stone wall and cast into the centre of it, run a few streams through it, and slush the whole over so that one can hardly keep his footing on it, and you have a Mexican country road in the rainy season.
But when we reached the outskirts of the town, and the road lay between tall hedgerows of flowering trees and tangled vines, we found the air perfumed with spicy odors, and enlivened by the chirping of birds. After crossing a couple of streams, we finally reached the plantation, and walked between long rows of coffee plants. They varied in age from one year to ten, but all above two years were well laden with fruit. ​I have considered well all the various enterprises, agricultural and industrial, possible in Mexico, and have come to the conclusion that, if one must come out here and labor,—if he feels a decided "call" to till the soil,—old Mother Earth will be about as generous to him in coffee culture as in anything. Whatever one embarks in, he must wait some years to see his money come back; if he choose the raising of cattle, he must wait for them to grow, for at least five years, and run the risk meanwhile of their dying or being stolen; and, besides, they can only increase in certain proportion; no cow can bear more than one or two calves a year, and no calf will grow any faster than he pleases, unless you stuff him full of expensive meal and grain. With corn, wheat, and barley, you must have hundreds of acres of land, must prepare it carefully, and hoe and weed or dress it several times during the season; and, after the crop is cut and stacked, your land is there again, barren and exposed as before, and you must go through the same process over again.
With coffee, you plant your land once, and that suffices for several years. Looking at it from my point of view,—the lazy man's outlook,—I can see nothing so inviting as coffee culture, unless it be a fat "living" in an English country church. In the first place, you buy your land, of which there is a fair supply yet to be had, at about ten dollars per acre. The soil here is mostly strong, clayey loam, with a heavy top deposit of vegetable mould, very rich and lasting. It is easily cleared, and, if not on a steep hillside, where the perpetual rains wash the humus away, retains its fertility a long while. After clearing, the plants, from six months to a year old, are set out in rows eight or ten feet wide, and about six feet apart in the row. Bananas or plantains should be set out in sufficient number to entirely shade the young plants; these are quick-growing, and produce great bunches of fruit the second year, so that a small income will be coming in from them before the coffee begins to bear. Corn and tobacco may be planted among the trees, if one is in a hurry to obtain returns from the land while his principal crop is growing; but it will be far better merely to ​keep the weeds down, till the land thoroughly without planting, and do everything to enrich the soil instead of exhausting it.
Coffee two years from the seed is frequently seen here, though the trees rarely bear much before reaching the age of three years, and are not in profitable bearing till four or five. But I have seen sturdy little trees, with their slender branches well bunched with fruit and flowers at between two and three years of age. Like the orange of Florida and the lime of the West Indies, the former of which will sometimes bear at two years from the bud, and the latter at two years from the seed, little reliance can be placed upon a crop at less than three or four. The coffee is in advance of them all, however, in point of time, for, while the orange hardly reaches maturity before its tenth year, coffee will repay its owner in its sixth or seventh. An advantage in favor of coffee over orange culture is, that here there can be combined with it the raising of every other tropical fruit. Here the mango lifts its solid green head above the plantations, though giving a shade too dense to be desirable, as well as the avocado pear, and even the peach and walnut.
In Mr. Finck's cafetal, or coffee grounds, we may see as great a variety of trees and smaller plants as is usually found in a jardin des plantes, for he is an accomplished botanist, and knows every plant in this region. He is especially devoted to orchids, and has collected here the rarest species, from the snow line of Orizaba to the hot lands of the coast, keeping them in great beds in the shade, and wired to the trees with densest vegetation. For a few years past he has been introducing the cinchona, and is the first one who has done it with success. From this tree he expects eventually to derive greater profit than from his coffee. The cinchona is not indigenous to Mexico; I am moved to say this because of an article in a Western paper describing the forests of the lowlands as being full of it. In that article, detailing in glowing terms the resources of Mexico, I found several products of the country that no botanist has discovered there yet.
It is a delightful zone that combines climate and soil so ​harmoniously that you may raise in it the fruits of any two,—of the tropic and temperate. It reminds me of the coffee region of the West Indies in vegetation, climate, scenery, and even in birds. A corner of Mr. Finck's large estate is bounded by a brook, which has hollowed a segment from a round hill, leaving a perpendicular wall of earth adorned with ferns, with interesting carludovicas, antheriums, and tree ferns; the last waving their feathery foliage in the air with a grace inimitable. There are a score of nooks equally charming with this, which I visited in company with the learned botanist, but will not describe, because there is a young man waiting for us whose experience, though short, may prove of greater interest.
For $3500 this young man (who, by the way, came from Illinois) has bought about fifty acres of beautiful land, more than half of it planted with trees, and in good condition. This is about the minimum, if one intends devoting himself to coffee alone, that can well support a family and prove profitable. Even then, this number of acres should be well cultivated, with very little waste land. One hundred acres would be better, in order that fifty or more might be in bearing all the time. With this young man I went out to look at his recent purchase, which lay about a mile from town, near enough to avail of all the conveniences of transportation and markets, and far enough to avoid the depredations of boys and yet get a good taste of the typical Mexican road. As we entered, we found ourselves surrounded by trees four and five years old, about five feet high, every branch loaded with glossy green bunches. The coffee, as every one knows, is not a bush, but a tree, that will grow to a height of twenty feet if permitted, but is nipped in at about six feet from the ground, thus gaining strength for the branches and main stalk, and presenting a surface from which the coffee is easily picked. Though the tree is constantly flowering and developing fruit, the proper harvest season is from November to April,—a little prolonged if carried into the latter month. The green berries turn bright red, are gathered, dried on level floors of stone or plaster in the sun, separated and hulled, and then stored. According to statistics prepared for the State Fair of Vera ​Cruz, held in Orizaba in the autumn, the export of coffee from the canton of Cordova for 1880 was 5,500,000 pounds; for 1881, from 7,000,000 to 7,500,000 pounds! The area in coffee trees is constantly being added to, and the trees themselves are growing rapidly, and I do not fear to predict for 1883 a crop yielding not far from 10,000,000 pounds. The trade is largely in the hands of New Orleans parties, who buy the berry at less than ten cents per pound.
Much is being said regarding the superiority of the coffee from Michoacan, but Michoacan is a far country, a country of volcanoes and internal strife. Experience has proved that coffee grown in one section can be raised equally well in another, and the difference
between the dry climate of Michoacan and this may be obtained by a change of altitude. Coffee introduced from Liberia into the West Indies flourished just as well as it did in Africa. The planters here are not insensible to the advantages sometimes resulting from a change of seed, and are experimenting with several varieties, chiefly with some from Colima. I must confess that I never tasted worse coffee than I got in Mexico; and if it is the result of my taste having been depraved by chicory, then give me chicory. ​I left my friend standing in his coffee grove, surrounded by trees high as his shoulder, far as the eye could reach. He was justly proud of his purchase, and the feeling of envy came as near having a lodgment in my breast as possible. Aside from building a house and superintending the setting out of new trees, he has little to do henceforward but to gather his crops and count the receipts. Five years is not a long time to wait, especially as small crops can be raised in the interval, which will more than pay for the labor. Five years is not long, when every year adds an appreciable height to the plants, and the second year brings spicy flowers, like bunches of arbutus, with fruit glossy as wax. The monotony of the seasons may be varied by studying out arid planting the various vegetables that will grow at different times of the year. One with a taste for botany need never be at a loss, having a vast storehouse all around him in the mountains and valleys, and no winter to destroy such plants as he may collect.
We stood upon the highest part of a coffee-crowned knoll, with hills and valleys all around us, and the mighty peak of snow-crowned Orizaba towering above the clouds behind us, and planned the house, and the avenue, and the observatory that should give at a glance the entire beautiful valley. This is the bright side of the picture, and I hope no other will be presented, either to my new friend, or to any who may follow him.
​is crossed, dark holes that pierce the mountain buttresses, the first of which is taken at the end of the viaduct. Three minutes from the time we leave the right bank of the barranca we are running a parallel course, diving in and out of successive tunnels, having plunged into an immense cul-de-sac, as it were, on one side, and found our way out on the other. At times there are curves on which we can see the train from end to end, and all the time we are continually ascending.
From the last of the tunnels we emerge upon a great tableland, and look out over broad stretches of cultivable acres, peaceful plains dotted with cattle, billowy ranges, spurs and peaks, and, above all, the great volcano, smiling serenely upon us. How beautiful are these high plains! Right in sight is the land of snow, before us and behind us the land of tropic heat. The valley into which the great ravine opens is a vast field of coffee, rice, sugar-cane, tobacco, and corn. The area between Cordova and Orizaba is, perhaps, the most fertile and desirable to live in, in Mexico. Here the products of three zones mingle; corn and coffee interlace their leaves, peach trees lift their heads above fields of tasselled cane, and grapes and mangos grow together in blooming gardens. With a stable government and with thorough cultivation, what might not this territory attain to! The scenery is magnificent; elevated knolls along the road give desirable spots for building sites; great sugar estates are yellow with cane, good as any raised in the West Indies. Nothing is wrong or misplaced except the inhabitants, who have disfigured the face of nature with their vile habitations.
And these habitations, by the material of which they are built and their manner of construction, indicate of themselves the increase in altitude and consequent depression of the thermometer. In the tierra caliente they are constructed of bamboo and light poles, open alike to wind and sun, for a slight shelter suffices for the tropics. In the tierra templada the wood used is heavier, and the structure more durable, while the better classes, especially in the towns, are of mud or stone. On the uplands of the tierra fria the dwellings are of adobe, or sun-dried brick, and of stone. ​The environs of Orizaba appear beyond, lovely so far as nature can make them, with gardens of coffee, lanes running beneath large trees, and red-roofed houses nestling beneath broad-leaved plantains. This valley, though situated four thousand feet above the sea, is yet within the limits of the tierra caliente. It is a trifle cooler than Cordova, less subject to fevers and to attacks from the vomito, and has inviting hotels,—inviting for Mexico,—streams, cascades, bathing-places, and good shops and markets. The climate is hot and humid, and the mosquitoes alert and vigorous; hence, the beneficial activity of the latter prevents the visitor from experiencing the enervating effect of the former. There are many churches here, all of them interesting,
several factories and mills, and the great machine-shops of the Mexican road, where engines are repaired and built.
The city of Orizaba, eighty-two miles from Vera Cruz, and containing about 13,000 inhabitants, is said to occupy the site of a village founded a long while ago, and conquered by Montezuma in 1457. Its original Aztec name, says one writer, was Ahauializapan, or Joy of the Water, which is a slight misnomer, since the inhabitants not only do not take joy in the water here, but are indebted to it for much dysentery and fever. During the French intervention it was occupied by those interlopers from Europe, and was a favorite resort with Maximilian during his brief reign in Mexico. Mount Borrego, where one hundred ​French zouaves are said to have routed five thousand men of the Mexican army, is a conspicuous object near the town. The station here is the best on the road; it is half a mile distant from the town, and connected with it by road and tramway.
Above Orizaba the rails are drawn over fertile fields and wooded hills, through a fine country, rapidly growing poorer, where they run straight away towards the hills, and then make a decided dash for the mountains. In half an hour from the small station of Encinal, we enter the gloomy gorge known as El Infernillo, the Little Hell, passing over dizzy banks and bridges, above a stream which has worn a deep chasm in the trap rock. A black cross on a projecting point indicates death and danger, and reminds us of the fate that awaits him who slips from the track above. Far below, gazing downward from the dizzy bridge we are crossing, upheld by slender columns, we can see a little stream dashing into a black and dismal ravine, where it is lost, until it reappears on the plain we have left. Plunging into a tunnel, we emerge at the other end into scenery radically different, for we have now reached the region of pines, more than five thousand feet above the sea. A little valley lies spread before us now, an emerald embosomed in the mountains, called La Joya, the Jewel, in the centre of which is the station of Maltrata. Just as the whistle sounds for this station, the volcano of Orizaba bursts upon the view again, its whole snow-white summit rising majestically above the hills. The train is met by hundreds of Indian girls and women, holding out baskets of fruit, such as peaches, pomegranates, oranges, pine-apples, avocado pears, and tamales, or meat smothered in corn paste, cakes, tortillas, and bottles of pulque; everything, in fact, that the Mexican taste (limited) is supposed to crave. Peach trees line the track at the station, and all the houses have gardens about them, as this is a suburb, and the town extends farther into the valley.
Beyond this the track literally climbs the mountain, approaching it by great curves. At La Bota, where the engine stops for water, and where they take on a supply of wood,—pine wood that gives out a resinous odor,—the down train can be ​seen creeping slowly on its course, held in check by the powerful engine. All the way up the hills you can trace the road, its serpentine trail drawn in and out the valley and along the ridges, ever and anon doubling upon itself, but ever climbing. At last we reach another water-tank, perched at the crest of a ridge, after having ascended over a grade of nearly five per cent through rock cuts hung with ferns, severing the backs of the buttresses that come down from the mountains above, and through tunnels that pierce them one after another. Looking down upon the hills and dales clothed in pines and oaks, we might imagine ourselves in New Hampshire, but we are already higher than Mount Washington!
Here the view is of surpassing beauty. Far to the left the volcano rears its white peak above ranks of sombre pines, and right beneath is a variegated landscape, alternate groves, copses, fields, and garden spots, through which is traced the sinuous line of the iron road. Beyond the tank is a narrow iron bridge, ninety feet long, and spanning a chasm that ends only at the valley below. If any support should snap here, nothing could save us from being precipitated two thousand feet downward. At the bridge the fair vale of Maltrata again lies before us, though ten miles distant by the track, and nearly three thousand feet below. Glorious are the views of Maltrata obtained as the train rushes in and out the cuts. The valley is perfectly flat, divided into squares by hedges and walls, with every shade of green, with houses and trees most picturesquely grouped, waving with grain in places, and golden where the harvest is done. Exactly in its centre is a red-domed church, and a square with portals and fountain; every inch is cultivated beyond the town, where verdant valleys run up into the hills, the slopes of which are yellow with grain and brown with upturned earth. Hill is piled upon hill, stretching away to the horizon till lost in purple haze. We are cutting the crests of a hundred ridges, crawling along the summits of mountains, now peering into dark chasms a thousand feet deep, containing streams drawn fine as silver threads, now penetrating forests of pines, black and vast. ​Crossing the last terrible bridge, on a curve, as at Metlac, and diving through the last dark tunnel, we finally reach Boca del Monte, the "Mountain's Mouth," at an altitude of seven thousand nine hundred feet above the sea. In the last thirteen miles we have climbed over three thousand perpendicular feet; a stream, that we saw in the valley below as a foaming river, is now so narrow that a boy could leap across it, for we are at its source.
We are now fairly out upon the great upland plateau; we have passed successively through tierras caliente and templada, and are now in tierra fria, the cold country. After dry and bushy hills, we pass over a plain swelling into knolls covered with open oak woods, alternating with green, flower-carpeted pastures. In the centre of an emerald plain is a blue pond, with sheep and cattle feeding on the slopes around it. A few miles farther, at a point indicating one hundred and eleven miles from Vera Cruz, and nearly eight thousand feet above the sea, is the station of Esperanza. A long stop is made here for the passengers to get breakfast, which is abundant and well cooked. Here, also, the great double-ended Fairlie engine, the steam giant that has drawn us over the tremendous grades below, is taken off and replaced by a lighter American one, as the plain now extends the whole distance of one hundred and fifty miles to the capital.
Esperanza is the Spanish equivalent for Hope. The station bearing this name is situated at the beginning of a vast sandy plain, producing thin crops of grain; and as there are no other buildings than those of the station, and nothing of interest nearer than the volcanic foot-hills of Orizaba, the unfortunate traveller who is compelled to stay here for a day or two, realizes why it was called Hope,—because he hopes to find a better place beyond, and is certain he can enter none drearier. The best view of the great volcano of Orizaba is here,—that snow mountain which has been dancing attendance upon us since long before we reached the shore, and playing hide and seek with us behind the hills, all along the line. Now he is unmasked, for he shoots up from the very plains we are on, ​in the morning cold and glittering, in the evening hidden by clouds.
The peak of Orizaba, according to Humboldt, attains to a height of 17,378 feet. Though not so accessible as Popocatapetl, which is four hundred feet higher, Orizaba has been several times ascended. The first ascent was by a party of American officers, in 1848; and the second, by a Frenchman, Alexander Doignon, in 1851, who found a staff with the date 1848 cut into it, and the tattered remains of a United States flag. Till then it was regarded as wholly inaccessible, and it was not until the gallant Frenchman made a second attempt (which nearly cost him his life) that the wondering natives could credit him, and award the honor of the first achievement to the modest Americans. The starting point for the peak is from the little village of San Andres, near the base of the cone, some of the inhabitants of which obtain ice from the summit.
The God of the Air, Quetzalcoatl, after shaking the dust of Cholula from his shoes, and having died on the coast of Goatzcoalcos, was brought to the peak of Orizaba, and his body consumed by fire. His spirit took its flight toward heaven in the shape of a peacock, and since that time the burning mountain has borne the name of Ciltlaltépetl, or Mountain of the Star.
The next station of importance is San Marcos, one hundred and fifty miles from Vera Cruz, where the narrow-gauge railroad from the latter city to Puebla and Mexico, by the way of Jalapa, crosses the Ferrocarril Mexicana. We are now in Tlascala, that little state whose heroic people, at war with Montezuma at the time of the arrival of the Spaniards, tested their invincibility in a terrible battle. Being defeated, they made a treaty with the white strangers, subsequently saving them from annihilation. We shall meet the conquistadores again, as we visit Tlascala, Cholula, and Mexico; they are only mentioned in this connection because, somewhere on these plains, and probably in this vicinity, we cross their line of march.
Across these sandy plains, environed by chalky hills above which rises the isolated peak of Malinche, sometimes may be ​seen, in the dry season, perpendicular columns of sand and dust dancing on the surface, like water-spouts over the sea.
At the station of Huamantla, an adobe village with a large white church, one hundred miles from Mexico, as at every stopping-place on the line, groups of horsemen in leather jackets and trousers, and wide sombreros, are drawn up along the track. These are the "rural guards," who have a truly rural look indeed, and who, being better paid than the regular soldiers
who accompany every train by the car-full, are supposed to be of greater service in case of an emergency. In fact, the regulars have been known to be perfectly oblivious of the existence of robbers, even when the latter were firing guns and pistols within a hundred feet of them, and depriving passengers of their entire possessions!
Apizaco is another adobe village, one hundred and seventy​six miles from the coast, where there is a restaurant, and here a branch line leaves the main line for the city of Puebla. At Soltepec, seventy miles from Mexico, we are at an elevation above the sea of 8,224 feet; but, beyond, the plain gradually declines to the Mexican valley.
We have long been in the region made famous for the maguey (Agave Americana), and at the station of Apam, fifty-eight miles from Mexico, are in the centre of the "pulque country." Fields of wheat and barley took the place of tobacco and sugar-cane many a mile back, but these in turn yield to that wonderful native of the Mexican plateau. Immense fields stretch away on every side, unbounded by walls, but crossed by a thousand rows of the maguey, and in the distance gleam the white walls of the haciendas, fort-like structures with pierced and battlemented walls, that pertain to domains from six to ten leagues in extent. Droves of horses and herds of cattle roam the pastures in the intervales, and blue lakes sparkle, in the rainy season, where in the dry months all is parched and brown.
The only remaining station of historic importance is Otumba, and its position has been indicated long before we reach it; for two miles away rise those gigantic pyramids of the Sun and Moon. Gliding down the fertile plains, past the shadowy pyramids, along the borders of the shallow lake, Tezcoco, under the brown hills of Guadalupe, we are at last fairly within the great valley of Anahuac, the original centre of Mexican civilization, and there before us lies the beautiful city, capital of Mexico, bathed perchance in the golden beams of the departing sun. And into this valley, the former theatre of strife between a multitude of peoples, towards which in years past the eyes of the world have been turned in amazement, we enter by the train, and roll into the suburbs of the city.