But Nature has disposed along this high plateau, vast, fabulously vast mineral wealth, and from the famous mines of Guanajuato, Zacatecas, Chihuahua, Durango, Potosi, Aguascalientes, Pachuca; and places—some of them noble towns, dowered with royal charters before the Mayflower sailed for New England—silver and gold poured forth to fill the needy coffers of Spain. Later, the English shareholder tried his hands upon the "mother-lode" with varying fortune, and copper, iron and other metals also came like magic from the rocks of this great wilderness.
On the eastern and western versants of the country, and in the south, we encounter a different landscape. Here Nature smiles. In places it may be hot and humid, perhaps malarious, with tangled forests. But rich vegetation, gorgeous flora and profuse animal life—bird, insect, reptile—abound. Here are fruitful plains and valleys, vast sugar-cane plantations, luscious fruits of kinds unknown to the world outside—among them the mamey, the "fruit of the Aztec kings," with orange and banana groves, coffee gardens, cocoa-trees, yielding the chocolatl of the Aztecs, rubber-trees with elegant foliage, whilst above, the graceful coco-palm rears its stately column and feathery plume high against the azure sky.
SCENE ON THE GREAT PLATEAU, MEXICO.
Vol. I. To face p. 104.
Here, indeed, is a region where it might have been supposed that man could dwell in peace and plenty, with a minimum of toil and ambition, of care and evil.
The climatic zones of Mexico were named by the Spaniards in accordance with the condition of their varying temperatures respectively, as, the Tierra Caliente, or hot lands, the Tierra Templada, or temperate lands, and the Tierra Fria, or cold lands: the first lying upon the coast, the second midway up the slopes, and the last the higher regions, reaching an elevation of 8,000 to 10,000 feet and more above the level of the sea.
In this intermediate zone of the Tierra Templada lies a land which has been not unjustly termed a region of perpetual spring, a truly desirable land, where the fortunate inhabitant lives close to the kindly earth as if in some mortal paradise—as far as Nature is concerned. In the high zone, healthful and invigorating, lies the beautiful city of Mexico in its enclosed valley; and many a handsome town is found throughout the three zones.
This city of Mexico was the coveted prize of Cortes and his Spaniards, and through the varying zones they passed after having, on that Good Friday in 1519, landed on the shores to which they gave the name of Vera Cruz—the place of the True Cross. Across the waters of the Gulf as they approached the unknown land was seen the gleaming peak of Orizaba, called by the natives Citlalteptl, or the Mountain of the Star, hanging in mid-heaven, its point over thirteen thousand feet above the sea.