For the first day our course followed a line nearly parallel with the base of the mountains, through a thick and tangled forest. We crossed innumerable small and rapid streams of the clearest water, sparkling over beds of variously-colored quartz pebbles—for we were now skirting one of the great ranges of primitive rocks, which form the nucleus of the continent. My long confinement in the canoe had contributed to disqualify me for active exertions, and long before night I became much fagged, and would fain have gone into camp. But the Indians traveled so tranquilly under their loads, that I was loth to discover to them my lack of endurance, and so kept on without complaint. In the afternoon our path began to ascend, and we gradually emerged from the thick and tangled woods into a comparatively open forest, which, in turn, gave place to groves of scattered pines and oaks, among which we encamped for the night.
From our elevated position I could overlook the wilderness which we had traversed during the day. It was at that season of the year when the erythrina puts on its scarlet robe of blossoms, and the ceiba clothes itself in flames, in splendid relief to the prevailing green. It seemed as if Nature held high holiday among these primeval solitudes, and arrayed herself only to wanton in the sense of her own beauty. But while vegetation was thus lavishly luxuriant in the valley, behind us the mountains rose, stern, steep, and bare. Vainly the dark pines, clinging to their sides, sought to vail their flinty frown. Wherever a little shelf of the rocks supported a scanty bed of soil, there the mountain grasses, and the sensitive-plant with its amaranthine flower, took root, like kindly thoughts in the heart of the hard and worldly man. From the gnarled oaks, and even from the unfading pines, hung long festoons of gray moss, which swayed sadly in the wind. And when the night came on, and I lay down beside the fire, beneath their shade, they seemed to murmur in a low and mournful voice to the passing breeze, which, laden with the perfume of the valley, rose with downy wings to bear its tributary incense to the skies.
Morning broke, but dark and gloomily, and although we resumed our march, directing our course diagonally up the face of the mountain, we were obliged to stop before noon, and seek shelter under a mass of projecting rocks, from a cold, drizzly rain, which now began to fall steadily, with every promise of merging in a protracted temporal. The clouds ran low, and drifted around and below us, in heavy, cheerless volumes, shutting from view every object except the pines and stunted oaks, in their gray, monastic robes, now saturated and heavy from the damp. Stowing our few valuables securely under the rocks, we lighted a fire, now acceptable not less for its heat than its companionship. Its cheerful flame, and the sparkle of its embers, revived my drooping spirits, and helped to reconcile me to the imprisonment which the temporal would be sure to entail. I can readily understand how fire commended itself to the primitive man as an emblem of purity and power, and became the symbol of spirit and those invisible essences which pervade the universe. God robed himself in flame on Sinai; in tongues of flame the Spirit descended upon the disciples at Jerusalem; an eternal fire burned upon the altars of the virginal Vesta, and in the Persian Pyrothea; to fire was committed the sacrifice of propitiation, and by its ordeal was innocence and purity made manifest. Among the American Indians it was held in especial reverence. The Delawares and the Iroquois had festivals in its honor, and regarded it as the first parent of the Indian nations. The Cherokees paid their devotions to the “great, beneficent, supreme, holy Spirit of Fire,” whose home was in the heavens, but who dwelt also on earth, in the hearts of “the unpolluted people.” And even the rude Indians who huddled with me beneath the protecting rocks in the heart of the wilderness, never commenced their simple meals without first throwing a small portion of their food in the fire, as an offering to the protecting Spirit of Life, of which it is the genial symbol.
The temporal lasted for three days, during which time it rained almost incessantly, and it was withal so cold, that a large and constant fire was necessary to our comfort. At the end of that time the clouds began to lift, and the sun broke through the rifts, and speedily dispersed the watery legions. But the rocks were slippery with the wet, and the earth, wherever it was found among the rocks, was sodden and unstable, rendering our advance alike disagreeable and dangerous. We remained, therefore, until the morning of the fourth day, when we resumed our march.
Chapter XV.
For a day and a half we continued to ascend, now skirting dizzy precipices, and next stealing along cautiously beneath beetling rocks, which hung heavily on the brow of the mountain. The features of the great valley which we had left were no longer distinguishable. What we had regarded as mountains there, now shrunk into simple undulations, like folds in some silken robe, thrown loosely on the ground. There was no longer a foothold for the pines, and their places were supplied by low bushes, thrusting their roots deep in the clefts, and clinging like vines to the faces of the rocks.
Finally, to my great joy, we reached the crest of the mountain. Upon the north, however, it fell away in a series of broad steps or terraces, lower and lower, until, in the dim distance, it subsided in the vast alluvial plains bordering on the Bay of Honduras, the waters of which could be distinguished, like a silver rim, on the edge of the horizon.
The air, on these high plateaus, was chill, and only the hardy mountain-grasses and the various forms of cactus found root in their thin and sterile soil. The latter were numerous and singular. Some appeared above the earth, simple, fluted globes, radiating with spines, and having in their centre a little tuft of crimson flowers. Others were mere articulated prisms, tangled in clumps, and also bristling with prickles. But the variety, known in Mexico as the nopal, was most abundant, and grew of tree-like proportions.