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308 hot lowlands; so that, next to the buzzards, which find business all the year round as the only scavengers, the northers are the best friends of Vera Cruz.

Not far from the city, and separated from it by an arm of the sea, is the island-fortress of San Juan de Ulua. It is a picturesque old pile, said to have cost the Spanish government forty millions of dollars. This extravagance

seems to have been quite a source of vexation to Charles V., its first owner. Standing one morning at a window of his palace in Spain about the time the architect's bills came in, he is said to have pointed his field-glass toward America, and, looking through it intently for a moment, to have exclaimed with grim humor, "Surely, a building which has cost so much should be seen above the horizon." This castle was the last foothold of Spain in Mexico, having held out against the revolutionists several years longer than any other place.

The first thought of every one who comes to Vera