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Rh comparatively level and low land intervening between the base of the plateau and the ocean, the ground at the station was white with hoar-frost; while behind it, apparently but a mile or two distant, and of not more than fifteen hundred to two thousand feet in elevation, rose the glistening, snow-covered cone of Orizaba. Within the cars, and even with closed windows, overcoats and shawls were essential. Within an hour, however, overcoats and shawls were discarded as uncomfortable. Within another hour the inclination was to get rid of every superfluous garment, while before noon the thermometers in the cars ranged from 90° to 95° Fahr., and the traveler found himself in the heart of the tropics, amid palms, orange-trees, coffee-plantations, fields of sugar-cane and bananas, almost naked Indians, and their picturesque though miserable huts of cane or stakes, plastered with mud and roofed with plantain-leaves or corn-stalks. In the descent, Orizaba (17,373 feet), which at the starting-point, and seen from an elevation of about 8,000 feet, is not impressive in respect to height, although beautiful, gradually rises, and finally, when seen from the level of the low or coast lands, becomes a most magnificent spectacle, far superior to Popocatepetl, which is higher, or any other Mexican mountain, but, in the opinion of the writer, inferior in sublimity to Tacoma in Washington