ANCIENT BELLS.
"There are several old churches in Tlascala in addition to the one we have mentioned, and we visited some of them more to pass away the time than with the expectation of finding anything of interest.
"In the afternoon we went to the shrine of Ocatlan, which is on a hill a mile or more from the grand plaza. This, we learned, was similar to the church of Guadalupe near the capital, as it commemorates the miraculous appearance of the Virgin to a poor, ignorant, but benevolent Indian named Juan Diego, in the years not long after the Conquest. The shrine is mostly of modern construction, and is greatly revered by the Indians, who come here in large numbers from all the surrounding country."
The party spent the night at Tlascala and left the place in season to connect with the train from Puebla, which meets the downward train at Apizaco from Mexico for Vera Cruz. Their trunks went by the train of the previous day, and were waiting for them in care of the Apizaco station-master. They had an abundance of time for breakfast at the junction; the through trains stop there twenty minutes for meals, and our travellers arrived fully a quarter of an hour in advance of the train by which they were to depart.
Apizaco is eighty-six miles from the city of Mexico. For the next sixty miles of the journey there was nothing of special interest along the route, which traverses the table-land at an elevation of nearly 8000 feet above the sea. The highest point on the line is at the siding of Ococotlan, between the stations of Guadalupe and Soltepec, where the elevation is 8333 feet. At Esperanza, near the edge of the great plateau, 152 miles from Mexico City, the barometer shows a height of 7900 feet. Here they met the up-train from Vera Cruz, which had left that city at 5.30 a.m., and was due in the capital at 7.30 p.m.
Just beyond Esperanza the train reached Boca del Monte, or "Mouth of the Mountain," and here began the descent to the tierra caliente. What our young friends saw in this descent will be told in the next chapter.
A NATIVE PLOUGHMAN.