Mexico / Its Ancient and Modern Civilisation, History, Political Conditions, Topography, Natural Resources, Industries and General Development

by C. Reginald Enock

CHAPTER I

A FIRST RECONNAISSANCE

Romance of history—Two entrance ways—Vera Cruz—Orizaba—The Great Plateau—Fortress of Ulua—Sierra Madre—Topographical structure—The Gulf coast—Tropical region—Birds, animals, and vegetation of coast zone—Tierra caliente—Malaria—Foothills—Romantic scenery—General configuration of Mexico—Climatic zones—Temperate zone—Cold zone—The Cordillera—Snow-capped peaks—Romance of mining—Devout miners—Subterranean shrines—The great deserts—Sunset on the Great Plateau—Coyotes and zopilotes—Irrigated plantations—Railways—Plateau of Anahuac—The cities of the mesa central—Spanish-American civilisation—Romance of Mexican life—Mexican girls, music, and moonlight—The peones and civilisation—American comparisons—Pleasing traits of the Mexicans—The foreigner in Mexico—Picturesque mining-towns—Wealth of silver—Conditions of travel—Railways—Invasions—Lerdo's axiom—Roads and horsemen—Strong religious sentiment—Popocatepetl and Ixtaccihuatl—Sun-god of Teotihuacan—City of Mexico—Valley of Mexico—The Sierra Madre—Divortia aquarum of the continent—Volcano of Colima—Forests and ravines—Cuernavaca—The trail of Cortes—Acapulco—Romantic old haciendas—Tropic sunset—Unexplored Guerrero—Perils and pleasures of the trail—Sunset in the Pacific Ocean.

Mexico, that southern land lying stretched between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, upon the tapering base of North America, is a country whose name is fraught with colour and meaning. The romance of its history envelops it in an atmosphere of adventure whose charm even the prosaic years of the twentieth century have not entirely dispelled, and the magnetism of the hidden wealth of its soil still invests it with some of the attraction it held for the old Conquistadores. It was in the memorable age of ocean chivalry when this land was first won for Western civilisation: that age when men put forth into a sunset-land of Conquest, whose every shore and mountain-pass concealed some El Dorado of their dreams. The Mexico of to-day is not less interesting, for its vast territory holds a wealth of historic lore and a profusion of natural riches. Beneath the Mexican sky, blue and serene, stretch great tablelands, tropic forests, scorching deserts, and fruitful valleys, crowned by the mineral-girt mountain ranges of the Sierra Madres; and among them lie the strange pyramids of the bygone Aztecs, and the rich silver mines where men of all races have enriched themselves. Mexico is part of that great Land of Opportunity which the Spanish-American world has retained for this century.

There are two main travelled ways into Mexico. The first lies across the stormy waters of the Mexican Gulf to the yellow strand of Vera Cruz, beyond which the great "star-mountain" of the Aztecs, Citlaltepetl,[1] rears its gleaming snow-cap in mid-heavens, above the clouds. It was here that Cortes landed, four centuries ago, and it is the route followed by the tide of European travellers to-day. Otherwise, the way lies across the Great Plateau, among the arid plains of the north, where, between the sparsely-scattered cities and plantations of civilised man, the fringe of Indian life is spread upon the desert, and the shadowy forms of the coyote and the cactus blend into the characteristic landscape. Both ways are replete with interest, but that of Vera Cruz is the more varied and characteristic. Here stands Ulua, the promontory-fortress, where more than one of Mexico's short-lived rulers languished and died of yellow fever, and which was the last stronghold of Spain. Beyond it arise the white buildings and towers of Vera Cruz, a dream-city, as beheld from the Gulf, of interest and beauty; and to the west, are the broad coastal deserts, bounded by the foothills and tropic valleys of the tierra caliente of the littoral. Piled up to the horizon are the wooded slopes and canyons of the great Sierra Madre, topped by the gleaming Orizaba, towering upwards in solitary majesty. We stand upon a torrid strand, yet gaze upon an icy mountain.

1 Orizaba, 18,250 feet altitude.

A country of singular topographic structure is before us. The Mexican Cordillera conceals, beyond and above it, the famous Great Plateau; the mesa central, running to the northwards eight hundred miles or more, and reaching westwardly to the steep escarpments of the Pacific slope. These plutonic and volcanic ranges encircle and bisect the great tableland, and enclose the famous Valley of Mexico and its beautiful capital, lying far beyond the horizon, above the clouds which rest upon the canyons and terraces of that steep-rising country to the west. Our journey lies upwards to this Great Plateau of Anahuac over the intervening plains and mountain range.

It is a tropical region of foliage, flowers, and fruits, of rugged countryside and rushing streams, this eastern slope of Mexico; and the blue sky and flashing sun form the ambient of a perpetual summer-land. We traverse the sandy Tertiary deserts of the coast, and thence enter among groves of profuse natural vegetation, interspersed with cultivated plantations. In these the gleam of yellow oranges comes from among the foliage, and the graceful leaves of the plátanos and rubber-trees fan their protecting shade over young coffee-trees. But away from the haunts of man along the littoral is a region of startling beauty—of rivers and lagoons and hills, their shores and slopes garmented with perennial verdure, the forest-seas bathing the bases of towering peaks. Beautiful birds of variegated and rainbow colours, such as Mexico is famous for, people these tropic southern lands of Vera Cruz. Along the shores and in the woods and groves, all teeming with prolific life, which the hot sun and frequent rains induce, the giant cranes and brilliant-plumaged herons disport themselves, and gorgeous butterflies almost outshine the feathered denizens. From the tangled boughs the pendant boa-constrictor coils himself, and hissing serpents, basking crocodiles, and prowling jaguars people the untrodden wilds of jungle and lagoon. In these great virgin forests tribes of monkeys find their home, and the tapir and the cougar have their being. Mangroves, palms, rubber-trees, mahogany, strange flora, and ungathered fruits run riot amid this tropical profusion, and flourish and fall almost unseen of man. And here the malarias of the lowlands lurk—those bilious disorders which man is ever fighting and slowly conquering. This is Mexico's tierra caliente.

But our way lies onwards towards the mountains. A wildness of landscape, unpictured before, opens to the view. Here rise weird rock-forms, Nature's cathedral towers and grim façades magnificent in solitude and awe-inspiring, as by steep bridle-paths we take our way along the valleys, and draw rein to gaze upon them. Ponderous and sterile, these outworks and buttresses of the great Sierra Madre rise upwards, fortifications reared against the march of tropic verdure beneath, cloud-swathed above and bathed below by forest-seas. Born in that high environment of rains and snows, rippling streams descend, falling in cascades and babbling rapids adown romantic glens, and their life-giving waters, with boisterous ripple or murmuring softly, take their way over silver sand-bar and polished ledge of gleaming quartz or marble, winding thence amid corridors of stately trees and banks of verdant vegetation, to where they fill the irrigation-channels of white-clad peasants, far away on the plains below.

Still onwards and upwards lies the way. One of the most remarkable railways in the world ascends this steep zone, and serpentines among sheer descents to gain the summits of abrupt escarpments, from which—a remarkable feature of the topography of the eastern slope of Mexico—the traveller looks down as into another country and climate, upon those tropical valleys which he has left below. This is the Mexican Vera Cruz railway.

THE ATLANTIC SLOPE: TUNNEL AND BRIDGE OF THE INFIERNILLO CAÑON, ON THE MEXICAN RAILWAY, IN THE STATE OF VERA CRUZ.

Let us pause a moment and gain a comprehensive idea of the character of Mexico's configuration and climate. It is to be recollected that Mexico, like other lands of Western America, is a country of relatively recent geological birth. The form of the country is remarkable. It shares the topographical features of others of the Andine countries of America—of tropical lowlands and temperate uplands, in which latter nearness to the heat of the Equator is offset by the coolness of the rarefied air of high elevations above sea-level. This structure is the dominant note of the scheme of Nature in Mexico—as it is in Peru and other similar countries—and the anthropo-geographical conditions are correspondingly marked. The region first passed is known as the tierra caliente, or hot lands. Its climatic limit extends up the slopes of the Sierras to an elevation of some 3,000 feet or more, embracing the lowlands, hot and humid generally, of the whole of the Gulf coast and of the peninsula of Yucatan, all of which regions are subject to true tropical conditions—the dense forests, the great profusion of animal life, the wonderful abundance and colour of Nature, and in places the swamps and their accompanying malarias, shunned by the traveller. But yellow fever and malaria are much less dreaded now than heretofore. In the city of Vera Cruz and in Tampico the new era of sanitation, brought about by British and American example and seconded by the Mexican authorities, has almost banished these natural scourges.

Rising from the tierra caliente, the road enters upon the more temperate zone, the tierra templada, extending upwards towards the Great Plateau. The limit of this climatic zone is at the elevation of 6,000 feet above sea-level, and here are evergreen oaks, pine, and the extraordinary forms of the organ cactus, as well as orchids. It is, indeed, a transition zone from the hot to the cold climates, and the zone embraces the greater part of the area of Mexico. Rising rapidly thence up to and over the escarpments of the Sierra Madre and the high plains, we shall enter upon the tierra fria or cold lands, ranging from 6,000 feet to 8,000 feet above sea level. Above this rise the high summits of the Mexican Cordilleras, with their culminating peaks, some few of which penetrate the atmosphere above the limit of perpetual snow. Thus, three diverse climatic zones are encountered in Mexico, which, ever since the advent of the Spaniards, have been designated as the tierra fria, tierra templada, and tierra caliente respectively. These conditions, as will be seen later, are also encountered upon the Pacific slope.

We now ascend the steep upper zone of the Sierra Madre, and cross it, descending thence to the Great Plateau or mesa central, the dominating topographical feature of the country. Here lies the real Mexico of history, and here is the main theatre of the new land of industrial awakening. Within the mountain ranges—that which we have crossed, and those which intersect this vast tableland and bound it on three sides—lies the great wealth of minerals—gold, silver, and others—which have attracted men of all races and all times since Cortes came. Here the true fairy tales of long ago, of millions won by stroke of pick, had their setting, and indeed, have it still. Upon these hills the thankful miner reared temples to his saints, and blessed, in altar and crucifix, the mother of God who graciously permitted his enrichment! And as if such devotion were to be unstinted, he also places his shrines within the bowels of the mines, and pauses as he struggles through the dark galleries, with heavy pack of silver rock upon his back, to bend his knee a moment before the candle-lighted subterranean altar.

And now great desert plains unfold to view. Upon their confines arise the blue mountain ranges which intersect them, their canyons and slopes, though faint in distance and blurred by shimmering heat arising from the desert floor, yet cast into distinct tracery by the rays of the sun. Towards the azure vault overhead, as we behold the arid landscape, eddying dust-pillars whirl skywards upon the horizon, or perhaps a cloud of dust, far away upon the trail which winds over the flat expanse, denotes some evidence of man—horseman or ox-cart pursuing its leisurely and monotonous way. Upon the edges of the dry stream-beds, or arroyos, which descend from the hills and lose themselves in wide alluvial fans upon the sandy waste, a fringe of scant vegetation appears, nourished by the water which flows down them in time of rain.

Beneath our horses' hoofs the white alkali crust which thinly covers the desert floor, crumbles and breaks. Gaunt cacti stretch their skinny branches across the trail, which winds among foothills and ravines, and the horned toads and the lizards, the only visible beings of the animal world here, play in and out of their labyrinths as we pass. We are upon the Great Plateau. All is vast, reposeful, boundless. The sun rises and sets as it does upon some calm ocean, describing its glowing arc across the cloudless vault above, from Orient to Occident. Sun-scorched by day, the temperature drops rapidly as night falls upon these elevated steppes, 7,000 feet or more above the level of the sea, and the bitter cold of the rarefied air before the dawn takes possession of the atmosphere. The shivering peones of the villages rise betimes to catch the sun's first rays, and stand or squat against the eastern side of their adobe huts, what time the orb of day shows his red disc above the far horizon. La capa de los pobres—"the poor man's cloak"—they term the sun, as with grateful benediction they watch his coming, and stamp their sandalled feet.

THE GREAT PLATEAU: NIGHTFALL IN THE DESERT.

Impressive and melancholy is the nightfall upon the Great Plateau. The opalescent tints of the dying day, and the scarlet curtains flung across the Occident at the sun's exit give place to that indescribable depth of purple of the high upland's sky. The faint ranges of hills which bound the distant horizon take on those diminishing shades which their respective distances assign them, and stand delicately, ethereally, against the waning colours of the sunset, whilst the foreground rocks are silhouetted violet-black against the desert floor. The long shadows which were projected across the wilderness, and the roseate flush which the setting sun had cast upon the westward-facing escarpments behind us, have both disappeared together. Impenetrable gloom lurks beneath the faces of the cliffs, the mournful howl of the coyotes comes across the plain, and their slinking forms emerge from the shadow of the rocks. There is a shapeless heap, the carcass of some dead mule or ox, some jetsam of the desert, lying near at hand, at which my horse was uneasy as I drew rein in contemplation, and which explains the nearness of the beasts of prey, and the long line of zopilotes, or buzzards, which I had observed to cross the fading gleam of the firmament. All is solitary, deserted, peaceful. The day is done, the night has come, "in which no man can work."

At daylight the uncultivated desert gives place to human habitations; and we approach the hacienda of a large landowner, with its irrigated plantations, and adobe buildings which form the abodes of the workers. All around are vast fields of maguey, or plantations of cotton, stretching as far as can be seen. Great herds of cattle, rounded up by picturesque vaqueros with silver-garnished saddles and strange hats and whirling lassoes, paw the dusty ground, shortly to writhe beneath the hot imprint of the branding-iron. Long irrigation ditches, brimming with water from some distant river, and fringed with trees, wind away among the plantations; and white-clad peones, hoe in hand, tend the long furrows whose parallel lines are lost in perspective. Centre of the whole panorama is the dwelling-house of the hacendado, the owner of the lands; and almost of the bodies and souls of the inhabitants! Quaint and old-world, the place and its atmosphere transport the imagination to past centuries, for the aspect of the whole still bears the stamp of its mediæval beginning, save where the new Mexican millionaire-landowner has planted some luxurious abode, replete with modern convenience.

But these are not isolated from the world upon this Great Plateau so much as might appear at first glance. There is a puff of smoke upon the horizon, and the whistle of a locomotive strikes upon the ear. The railway which links this great oasis of cultivated fields with others similar, and with the world beyond, runs near at hand, and will bear us, do we wish it, away to the confines of the Republic in the north, to the United States, and in five days to New York. Southwards it winds away to the great capital City of Mexico, to Vera Cruz, and thence on towards the borders of Guatemala. But let us avoid the railway yet. Not thus, in the comfort of the Pullman cushions, do we know the spirit and atmosphere of Mexico; but the saddle and the dusty road shall be our self-chosen portion. Indeed, it will be so from sheer necessity, for our way will lie onwards to the Pacific Ocean, and no railway of the plateau quite reaches this yet.

Throughout the Great Plateau of Anahuac, separated by long stretches of dusty wilderness, unclothed except by scanty thorny shrubs, and scarcely inhabited except by the coyote and the tecolote,[2] are handsome cities with their surrounding cultivation and characteristic life. As we top the summit of a range and behold these centres of population from afar, a bird's-eye view and philosophical comprehension of their ensemble is obtained. Seen from the outside, they present a picturesque view of cathedral spires and gleaming domes and white walls; the towers rising from the lesser buildings amid groves of verdant trees, forming a striking group, all backed by the blue range of some distant sierra. The main group shades off into a fringe of jacales—the squalid habitations of the peones, and of the city's poor and outcast, with rambling, dusty roads bordered by hedges of prickly pear, or nopales; picturesque, quaint, the roads ankle-deep in white adobe dust, which rises from beneath our horse's hoofs and covers us with an impalpable flour upon traversing the environs of the place. Clattering over the cobble-paved streets, we rapidly approach the central pulse of the town, the plaza. Singular shops, where fruits and meats and clothing are displayed in windowless array, line the streets, and quaint dwelling-houses, with iron grilles covering their windows, giving them the mediæval Hispanic aspect familiar to the Spanish-American traveller. Into these we gaze down from the height of the saddle in passing, and perchance some dark-haired Mexican damsel, who has been snatching a moment from her household duties to gaze at the outside world, retires suddenly from the balcony with well-simulated haste and modesty before the rude gaze of the approaching stranger. Indians or peones in loose white garments of cotton manta, with huge Mexican straw hats, and scarlet blankets depending from their shoulders, stalk through the street, or issue from ill-smelling pulque shops, whose singularly-painted exteriors arrest the attention. Gaunt dogs prowl about and lap the water of the open acequias, or ditch-gutters, between the road and the footpath, fighting for some stray morsel thrown into the street from the open doors of the shops aforesaid. Of stone or of adobe—generally the latter—according to the geology of the particular neighbourhood, the houses are whitened or tinted outside, with flat roofs, or azoteas. Through the wide entrance-door a glimpse is obtained of an interior paved patio, adorned, in the better-class homes, with tubs of palms and flowers; and before one of such a character we draw rein—the meson or fonda, the hotel under whose roof temporary shelter shall be sought. This abode faces the plaza, and opposite rises the quaint church—or cathedral if it be a State capital city—which is the dominating note of the community.

2 Mexican night owl.

ON THE GREAT PLATEAU: VIEW OF THE CITY OF DURANGO.

Exceedingly picturesque are the fine cities which form Mexico's chief centres of civilisation along the Great Plateau—Chihuahua, Durango, Guadalajara, Puebla, and many others. They have that quaint, old-world air ever characteristic of Spanish-America, unspoilt by the elements of manufacturing communities. Their shady plazas are centres of recreation and social life, always in evidence, distinctive of Spanish-American civilisation, where music is a part of the government of the people; a feature far more prominent than in Britain or the United States. The cathedrals, the quaint architecture of the streets, the barred windows, and the picturesque dress of the working class, form an atmosphere of distinctive life and colour. Let us halt a moment in the plaza. The band is discoursing soft music, varied by some stirring martial air; the Mexican moon has risen, and now that the sunset colours pale, vies with the lamps of the well-lit promenade to illumine a happy but simple scene. Its rays shine through the feathery boughs of the palms, and glisten on the broad, elegant leaves of the plátanos—which grow even in the upland valleys—whilst the scent of orange-blossoms falls softly through the balmy air, as in ceaseless promenade fair maidens and chatting youths, with coquetry and stolen glance, pass round the square untiringly. White dresses and black eyes and raven tresses—the olive-complexioned beauties of the Mexican uplands take their fill of passing joy. The moment is sweet, peaceful, even romantic; let us dally a moment, nor chafe our cold northern blood for more energetic scenes. Do we ask bright glances? Here are such. Shall we refuse to be their recipient? And moonlight, palms, and music, and evening breeze, and convent tolling bell, and happy crowd—no, it is not a scene from some dream of opera, but a phase of every-day life in Mexico.

In many respects it is an atmosphere of charm and interest which the traveller encounters in Mexican life, especially if he has recently arrived from among the prosaic surroundings of Mexico's great northern neighbour, the United States. Indeed, the transition from the busy Anglo-Saxon world which hurries and bustles in strenuous life northward from the Rio Grande, to that pastoral and primitive land of Spanish-America is as marked as that between Britain and the Orient. Yet it is only divided by a shallow stream—the Rio Grande. As the traveller crosses this boundary he leaves behind him the twentieth century, and goes back in time some hundreds of years—a change, it maybe said en passant, which is not without benefit, and attractive in some respect. The brusque and selfish American atmosphere is left behind, the patience and courtesy of Mexico is felt. The aggressive struggle for life gives place to the recollection that to acquire wealth is not necessarily the only business of all men and all nations; for the patient peon lives in happiness without it. You may scorn him, but he is one of Nature's object-lessons.

Singularly un-American—that is if United States and Canadian manners and customs shall be considered typical of America—are the customs of the Mexican. The influence and romance of the long years of Spanish domination and character have been crystallised upon the Mexican soil. The mien and character of the race created here in New Spain is marked for all time as a distinctive type, which may possess more for the future than the votary of Anglo-Saxon civilisation and strenuous commercialism may yet suspect. Whatever critical comparison may be applied to these people, the foreigner will acknowledge the pleasing trait of courtesy they invariably show. The elegance and grace of Spanish manners, wafted across the Atlantic in the days of ocean chivalry, were budded to the gentle courtesy of the native; and the brusque Anglo-Saxon is almost ashamed of his seeming or intended brusqueness before the graceful salutation of the poorest peon. Hat in hand, and with courteous or devout wish for your welfare on his lips, the poor Mexican seems almost a reproach to the harbinger of an outside world which seemingly grows more hard and commercial as time goes on.

The picturesque and the simple are, of course, bought at the expense, too often, of hygiene and comfort, and Mexico does not escape this present law. Yet it is remarkable how soon the Briton or the American in Mexico adapts himself to his surroundings, and grows to regard them with affection. It is true that the government of the country is practically a military despotism, yet the foreigner is respected, and none interfere with him. On the contrary, he is often looked up to as a representative of a superior State, and if he be worthy he acquires some of the demeanour of race-noblesse oblige.

There are cities set on steep hill-sides, which we shall enter. Terrace after terrace climb the rocky ribs of arid hills. Houses, interspersed with gardens; communities backed by the soft outlines of distant ranges, seen adown the widening valley; and walls, houses, streets, people, landscape; all are of that distinctive colour and character of the Mexican upland, over-arched by the cloudless azure of its sky. Clustered upon these same steep mineral-bearing hills—and, indeed, they are the raison d'être of the town at all in that spot—are the great mining places, ancient and modern, which form so important a feature of the life of the country on the Great Plateau.

Fabulous wealth of silver has been dug from these everlasting hills. Grim and abandoned mine-mouths, far away like black dots upon the slopes, and strange honeycombed galleries and caverns far beneath the outcropping of the lodes, have vomited rich silver ore for centuries: and the clang of miners' steel and the dropping candle are now, as ever, the accompaniment of labour of these hardy peones. The very church, perhaps, is redolent of mining, and was raised by some pious delver in the bowels of the hill whereon it stands—a thank-offering for some great luck of open sesame which his saints afforded him.

But we will not linger here; Guanajuato and Zacatecas and Pachuca shall be our theme in another chapter, and the tale of toil and silver which they tell. For the moment the way lies down the Great Plateau, among its intersecting ranges of hills, through the fertile valleys, which alternate with the appalling sun-beat deserts.

The conditions of travel in this great land of Mexico—it is nearly two thousand miles in length—are, perhaps, less arduous than in Spanish-American countries generally. Mexico has lent itself well to the building of railways in a longitudinal direction, upon the line of least resistance from north-west to south-east, paralleling its general Andine structure. Several great trunk lines thus connect the capital City of Mexico and the southern part of the republic with the civilisation of the United States, over this relatively easy route. Yet the earliest railway of Mexico, that from Vera Cruz to the City of Mexico, traverses the country in the most difficult direction, transversely, rising from tide-water and the Atlantic littoral, and ascending the steep escarpments of the Eastern Sierra Madre to fall down into the lake-valley of Mexico, bringing outside civilisation to that isolated interior world. But Mexico's singular topographical position did not secure her from invasion. Three times the city on the lakes has fallen to foreign invaders—the Spaniards of the Conquest, the French of Napoleon, and the Americans of the United States. Indeed, the flat and arid tableland stretching away for such interminable distances to the north was formerly a more potent natural defence than the Cordilleran heights which front on the Atlantic seas; and the axiom of Lerdo is well brought to mind in considering the geographical environment: "Between weakness and strength—the desert!"

ORIZABA, CAPPED WITH PERPETUAL SNOW: VIEW ON THE MEXICAN RAILWAY AT CORDOVA.

But away from the railways, and the roads where diligencias ply their lumbering and dusty course, the saddle is the only, and indeed the most characteristic, mode of travel; and the arriero and his string of pack-mules is the common carrier, and the mountain road or dusty desert trail the means of communication from place to place. Along these the horseman follows, day after day, his hard but interesting road, for to the lover of Nature and incident the saddle ever brings matter of interest unattainable by other means of locomotion. The glorious morning air, the unfolding panorama of landscape—even the desert and the far-off mountain spur which he must round ere evening falls, are sources, of exhilaration and interest. The simple people and their quaint dwellings, where in acute struggle for life with Nature they wrest a living from rocks and thorns—are these not subjects, even, worthy of some passing philosophical thought? Not a hilltop in the vicinity of any human habitations—be they but the wretched jacales or wattle-huts of the poorest peasants—but is surmounted by a cross: not a spring or well but is adorned with flowers in honour of that patron saint whose name it bears; and not a field or hamlet or mine but has some religious nomenclature or attribute. For the Mexicans are a race into which the religion of the Conquistadores penetrated indelibly, whose hold upon them time scarcely unlooses. The creeds of the priests, moreover, are interwoven with the remains of Aztec theistic influence, and the superstitions of both systems hold the ignorant peasantry of Mexico in enduring thrall. Much of beauty and pathetic quaintness there is in this strong religious sentiment, which no thinking observer will deride; much of retrograde ignorance, which he will lament to see.

The Great Plateau tapers away towards the south, terminating in the Valley of Mexico, bounded by the snowy Cordillera of Anahuac. Within this range are two great volcanic uplifts, two beautiful mountain peaks, crowned with perpetual snow—the culminating orographical features of the Sierras, and the highest points in Mexico. The loftiest of these is Popocatepetl, "the smoking mountain," and its companion is Ixtaccihuatl, the "sleeping woman," both of poetical Indian nomenclature. These beautiful solitary uplifts rise far above the canyons and forests at their bases: penetrate the clouds which sometimes wreath them, terminating in a porcelain-gleaming summit of perpetual snow. The mid-day sun flashes upon them, rendering them visible from afar, and its declining rays paint them with that carmine glow known to the Andine and Alpine traveller, which arrests his vision as evening falls. So fell, indeed, the morning rays of the orb of day upon the burnished golden breastplates of the image set on the sacred pyramid of Teotihuacan: the sun-god, Tonatiuah, as in the shadowy Toltec days he faced the flashing east.

Prehistoric fact and fable press hard upon us as we approach the famous Valley of Mexico and its fine capital. This is the region where that singular "stone age" flourished, of pyramid-building and stone-shaping peoples. Here both geology and history have written their pages, as if Nature and Fate had conspired together to mark epochs of time and space in ancient temple, dead revolution, and slumbering volcano. And now below us lies the City of Mexico. From the wooded uplands and hill-summits—redolent of pine and exhilarating with the tonic air—which form the rim of the valley, the panorama of the capital and its environs lies open to the view. Plains crossed by white streaks of far-off roads, intersecting the chequered fields of green alfalfa and yellow maize; haciendas and villages embowered in luxuriant foliage; the gleam of domes and towers, softened in the glamour of distance and bathed by a reposeful atmosphere and mediæval tints—such is Mexico, this fair city of the West.

PINE-CLAD HILLS FORMING THE RIM OF THE VALLEY OF MEXICO, 8,000 FEET ELEVATION ABOVE SEA-LEVEL.

The City of Mexico, like most centres of human habitation in whatever part of the world, is most beautiful when seen from afar, and in conjunction with Nature's environment. But the old Aztec city, the dark, romantic seat of the viceroys, the theatre of revolutionary struggle, and the modern centre of this important Mexican civilisation, is a really handsome and attractive city. Indeed, the capitals of many Spanish-American republics, and their civilisation and social régime, are often in the nature of a revelation to the traveller from Europe or the United States, who has generally pictured a far more primitive State. With its handsome institutions and public buildings, and extensive boulevards and parks, and characteristic social, literary, and commercial life, the City of Mexico may be described as Americo-Parisian, and it is rapidly becoming a centre of attraction for United States tourists, who, avid of historical and foreign colour, descend thither in Pullman-car loads from the north. The city lies some three miles from the shore of Lake Texcoco, which, with that of Chalco and others, forms a group of salt- and fresh-water lagoons in the strange Valley of Mexico. At the time of the Conquest the city stood upon an island, connected with the mainland by the remarkable stone causeways upon which the struggles between the Spaniards and the Aztecs took place, during the siege of the city at the time of the Conquest. But these lakes, after the manner of other bodies of water, generally, in the high elevations of the American Cordilleras—Titicaca, in Peru, to wit—are gradually perishing by evaporation, their waters diminishing century by century. The Valley of Mexico, however, of recent years has received an artificial hydrographic outlet in the famous drainage canal and tunnel, which conducts the overflow into a tributary of the Panuco river, and so to the Gulf of Mexico.

The Valley of Mexico is surrounded by volcanic hills, forming a more recent formation of the Andine folds, of which the Sierra Madres compose the Mexican Cordilleras. We have now to cross this, for our faces are set towards the Pacific Ocean. We ascend and pass the Western Sierra Madre, the divortia aquarum of the Pacific watershed, leaving the intra-montane plateau of Anahuac and the mesa central behind us. Again the climate changes as the downward journey is begun, and again the tierra caliente is approached. The culminating peaks—the beautiful Popocatepetl and Ixtaccihuatl—sink now below the eastern horizon, but as we journey to the west Colima's smoking cone will rise before the view. The descent from the highlands to the west coast is even more rapid than to the east, and the temperate climate of the valleys, and the bitter cold of the early morning on the uplands, soon give place to tropical conditions. Extensive forests of oak and pine, clothing the sides of the canyons and barrancas of the high Sierra Madre, are succeeded by the profuse vegetation of the torrid zone. Down in the soft regions of the west, where tropical agriculture yields its plentiful and easily-won harvests, are romantic old haciendas and villages hidden away in the folds of the landscape, such as are a delight to the traveller and the lover of the picturesque. The "happy valley" of Cuernavaca is reached by railway from the capital, but beyond this the road to the seaboard is still that ancient trail which Cortes used, which descends to Acapulco, for the railway builders have not yet completed their works to the Pacific waters.

Away from the main route of travel lie sequestered old sugar estates, and villages of romantic and picturesque charm, yet untouched by speculator or capitalist. Antique piles of stone buildings are there, redolent of that peculiar poetry of the pastoral life of Mexico in the tropics. The old Spaniards built well; their solid masonry defies the centuries; and their most prosaic structures were invested with an architectural charm which the rapid money-seeker of to-day cares little for, in his corrugated iron and temporary materialism. Near to the arches, columns, and turrets of the old haciendas the garden lies, replete with strange fruits and flowers. The gleam of oranges and limes comes from the tangled groves; grapes and pomegranates vie with each other in unattended profusion. The iguana sports among the old stone walls of the great garden, and humming-birds and butterflies hover in the subtle atmosphere. The tropic sunset throws a peaceful glamour and serenity over all. The cocoanut palms, with feathery grace above and slender column upward rearing, stir not against their ethereal setting as we watch, and the passing water in the old aqueduct scarce breaks the tropic silence, or if, perchance, it whisper, murmurs of centuries past, a low refrain.

But we shall journey away from the haunts of man again, and penetrate the deep dark barrancas and little-known mountain-fastnesses of the western slope of the State of Guerrero. Here are great uninhabited and unexplored stretches of country, rugged and wild, replete with matters of interest, whether for hunter, sportsman, or archæologist. Indeed, it would be difficult to find a region offering so varied a nature of resource and interest in any part of the world, except possibly in the still less accessible wilds of the Amazonian slopes of the Peruvian Andes. The botanist will find on this Pacific side of Mexico an unstudied flora, and the ethnologist and the antiquarian a number of native races, speaking strange separate languages; and the ruins of thousands of the habitations of prehistoric man. The climate in these rugged regions ranges from the heat of the fierce tropical sun to the bitter cold of the mountain summits. Abundant bosques or forests of oak cover the higher regions, and the wild and broken nature of the country renders it difficult to traverse, and calls for the adventurous spirit of the pioneer and explorer, without which the traveller will but meet with discomfort and danger.

Yet the true traveller finds pleasure in these matters. The impressive grandeur of the mountain landscape, the endless forests, the profound ravines do but serve to divert his mind from the peril and discomfort of the trail. Here he may revel in Nature's untamed handiwork of mountain, forest, and flood, as day after day he journeys onward in the saddle towards the Pacific Ocean. Here are the imposing barrancas of Jalisco which he traverses, and marks how they are buried in the profuse vegetation which presses up to the very border of the lava of smoking Ceboruco. Thence the myrtle forests of Tepic are penetrated. On the tropic lakes thousands of log-like alligators lie, gloomily awaiting their prey. From the verge, which rich forests fringe, and where brilliant water-weeds encircle the shoals, dainty pink and white herons rise, and below the blue surface gleams the sheen of myriad fish. Far to the southwards the fitful volcanic flames of Colima light up the landscape at night. A day's journey more across the coastal plains, and our reconnaissance is finished. The long-drawn surf beats upon the shore of the vast western ocean, for we have crossed the continent; and the sun's glowing disc dips to the blood-red waves—sunset in the Pacific.

TYPICAL VILLAGE OF THE PACIFIC COAST ZONE: STATE OF COLIMA.