Perrysburg journal. (Perrysburg, Wood Co., O. [Ohio]) 186?-1965, 1879-09-12
The Great pOpooatapetl,


The big cave under the Castle of Cha
pultepec is not the only cool place in
Mexico In the hot season. There is an
ice-house, not more than two days
| journey from the capital, that is capa-
BILE of supplying all the Mexican States
and all the United States the whole year
rouhd, and one that does not require a
! thick overcoat of sawdust to keep II
cool. 1t is the summit Of the volcano
Popocatapetl, about 10000 feet, or four
miles hb6ve the level of the sea. A
stranger to the country may think the
Mexican exhausted himself when he in
vented this tremendous and almost un-
| pronounceable name, but he did not,
! for he still had strength enough to name
the other big volcano, twenty or
thirty miles away, lxtacihuatl, which is
a great deal worse. This Popocatapetl
| is the finest ice-house in the world, for
its supply is inexhaustible, and it never
needs filling. Its summit is above the
snow line, and the snow melts little
every day in the sun, and every night
the water turns into ice. People who
live in Mexico City like to say that
their supply of ice comes from Popo-
catapetl, sixty miles away; but all the
ice that is used in Mexico City might
be imported from Bagdad at very little
expense. The Mexicans put their wa
ter into porous stone pals, with sides
two or three inches thick, and it is at
once cooled, and filtered. Then
they pour four quarts of it in
to pint of native whisky, and
sell it at ten cents a glass. Popocata-
petl, however, has the honor of being
the highest mountain on the American
Continent, and the Mexicans could get
plenty of ice there, if they were not too
lazy to go after it. There is a great
deal of fraud about these high mount
aims. We read of a mountain four
miles high, and think it must be tre-
mendous affair, but when we come to
see it we find that it rises out of plain
that is itself two miles high, and that
parent height of the mountain-and the
two miles of mountain that are left do
not look so very high. But it is some-
thing of a climb to the top of Popoca-
tapetl, nevertheless, for nature, when
fixing things up, put all her nice thick
air around the surface of the earth, and
spread the air in the suburbs so very
thin that you might easily squeeze q
quart of it into thimble Consequent
ly, the air near the top of high mount
ain is very poor stuff, and does not sat
isfy the lungs at all. That is, ordinary
lungs. After man has been up there
long time, he can educate his lungs
down to it, but it requires patience. 1t
is bad enough in Mexico City. The air
there Is so thin you can put a cubic foot
of it between the leaves of photograph
album, and then shut the clasps. After
going up flight of stairs, stranger
has to stop and pant, and take a few
extra pants.
When a stranger goes to Mexico
everybody who has ever been there asks,
"Are you going to climbPopocatapetl?"
and the stranger almost invariably re-
plies, Certainly" He almost inva-
riably changes his mind. Popocata-
petl is private property, owned by a
resident of the Mexican capital. In
our own oountry,where there are plenty
of things to get, nobody would take q
volcano for gift, but in Mexico, where
there are so few things to own, they
snap up volcanoes as we would gold
mines, and brag of owning them.
There is something not only unique but
impressive in owning a volcano. Twas
going down stairs in the Iturbide Ho-
tel in Mexico one day with a native,
when the native pointed out a gentle
man coming up stairs, and said that he
was the owner of the volcano Popocat-
apetl. | rather expected to see fire
belching out of his mouth, and brim-
stone oozing out of his ears. But there
was nothing of the kind. His name
was Gen. Ochoa, and the guide-book
says he is "perfect gentleman" so it
must be so. If he is, should think he
would start up his worn-out old volcano
when Il lot or strangers go down to see
it. But he don't. 1t is not within the
memory of man that this fraud of a
volcano has done any real work. We
might as we'll say that old Roundtop,
up in the Catskills, is volcano, and
put it in all the biographies, and ad-
vertise it all over the world. Gen.
Ochoa, who owns this defunct volcano,
is very ordinary looking person. and
no one, to look at him, would suppose
that he pays his board-bills from the
income derived from the sale of brim-
stone, but he does. Some of his ene-
mics say that he is under contract to
supply an unmentiOnable country with
birthstone, but this is hardly to be cred
| tied.
There are good many reasons why
it is not worth while to climb Popocat-
apctl. The first and foremost is, several
women have already climbed it, and
where a woman can climb it is no great
feat for an American young man to 90.
In the second place, it is sixty miles
| from the capital, which in Mexico
means two days journey over bad
roads and in uncomfortable stages.
On the upper part of the mountain the
atmosphere is so rare that weak per-
sons have frequently been attacked
with hemorrhage of the lungs, and
some have died. The journey is la.
borious one, and good mile of the
way straight up hill, is through ashes
and cinders foot deep. Last, but not
least, the journey is very expensive fol
stages, board, guides and costumes.
Postscript-The game is not worth the
powder. 1t is great satisfaction tc
see this mountain from a distance; tc
sit on the upper piazza of hotel, with
your feet on the railing, and good
Mexican cigar, thinking: $50 that il
Popocatapetl, is itP That is the mount
ain my old country schoolmaster used
to say was the highest in America, with
a pronunciation eighteen degrees wide
of the mark. And now there she is
Who'd ever have thought it in those
old days of school-house benches and
wandering school aliases" While you
are looking at it, if you choose the
right time of the day-after the sun
goes down-it disappears before your
cigar is finished. 1t is quite possible
that the reader may have heard that
there is no twilight in the tropics-the
sun goes down andin very few minutes
it is dark. The mountain grows dim,
and disappears like the school-day