Page:About Mexico - Past and Present.djvu/168

160 of the people of the lowlands lived. The banana, the plaintainplantain [sic], manioc, cocoa, vanilla and other tropical fruits made this a home of plenty. The white-walled villages nestling in these fertile plains were often unseen by the traveler until he could look down upon them from some breezy terrace on the mountains.

The road took the army over some of the wildest passes. The steep side up which they clambered was here and there cleft by deep fissures; these often formed the bed of a torrent hurrying onward to the Gulf. Where the path crossed these ravines a log or a leaning tree bridged the yawning chasm, or a single arch spanned it at some dizzy height. Up, up, up these frightful steeps the long lines of men and horses wound, often in paths wide enough for only a single passenger. From different points upon the way their eyes took in some of the grandest landscapes in the world. Sunny plains stretched far below, sloping gently toward the Gulf. Here and there the white walls and the towers of some pueblo gleamed through the deep green of surrounding orchards or crowned a hilltop. It is not probable that the country was densely populated. There were no scattered farmhouses, the home of a single family, as with us, but hamlets where a number gathered for mutual protection.

Beyond this lookout place the army passed into a region of intense cold—that frigid zone which enwraps the world everywhere, if one only climbs sky ward far enough to find it. Here the vapors from the Gulf, wafted westward against the frozen mountains, were condensed, and fell ill a pitiless storm of sleet in which the troops perished. The thick garments of quilted cotton with which many had provided themselves at Trinidad were as great a protection