SHRINE OF THE VIRGIN OF GUADELOUPE—CUERNAVACA
Cuernavaca with its baths and mineral waters is the favorite of all the resorts, easily accessible to the fashionable Mexican. Here also almost continually resides a large colony of the European ladies whose husbands do business in Mexico City, the high altitude, thin air, and chilly temperature of which rarely agree with the health of the women who come there from the lower sea levels. The men can stand it from the first, if their hearts and lungs are sound, but the women are often sent to Cuernavaca, there to sojourn until they become acclimated to the conditions of these highland plateaus. The harsh climate of Mexico City is particularly cruel to all convalescents; hence invalids also come here to regain their strength. Thus, there is much travel upon the railway between the capital of the republic and its most salubrious, nearby resort.
It was afternoon when we drew out of Cuernavaca for the long climb to the height of land. As we ascended, the evening shadows were lengthening and creeping out from every cleft and hollow along the mountain sides; and toward the east, splitting the blue sky, towered Popocatepetl. The most profound impression of my sojourn in Mexico, a memory which will follow me through life, is that of the mighty, glittering, distant, yet ever-present, snow-bound cone of Popocatepetl.
THE BORDA GARDENS—CUERNAVACA
As we crossed the height of land and began our descent, the long evening shadows filled the great valley of Anahuac, while forth from every vale and hollow crept little bunches of cloudlike mist, until at last, with strange and weird effect, the assembled vapors shut from my vision the whole extent of the valley beneath, and made it seem as though we were plunging into the unfathomable depths of a white sea. The land, the lakes, the towns, the villages, and the city were hid beneath the impenetrable, fleecy cloud-billows.
It was dark when we entered the city. I took a cocha, and I am here again in my stone-walled chamber of the hotel. I entered the city from the north, I now leave it by the east, along the route which was traversed by the invading conquerors from old Spain, when four hundred years ago they came up from the placid waters of the sea, a dreadful apparition, bringing death in their mailed fists, and pestilence and cruel enslavement to a proud and ruling race.