Page:Appleton's Guide to Mexico.djvu/189

Rh In the tierra caliente (hot land) the hovels of the natives are of one story, and are generally thatched with palm-leaves.

Three lines of telegraph are seen by the side of the track. One of them belongs to the National Government, another to a private corporation called "The Commercial," and the third to the Mexican Railway Company. The last uses imported poles of cast-iron, with white china insulators.

Passing the station of Tejeria (9½ miles), whence a branch tramway leads to Jalapa, 60 miles distant, the surface of the ground continues flat, and affords good grazing all the way to Soledad (26 miles); elevation, 305 feet. Here the train stops ten minutes. Coffee and bread are for sale, at the price of one real. The majestic, snow-clad peak of Orizaba now rises into full view. For a hundred miles the eye follows the crest of the sierra forming the eastern boundary of the table-land.

The plain of the State of Vera Cruz is about thirty miles in width. After crossing the Soledad River, the ascending grade becomes perceptible. At many of the railway-stations cakes of compressed coal are piled in large masses. They are imported from Great Britain, as there is no coal near the line of the road, and wood being scarce and dear, except in the vicinity of the volcano of Orizaba.

The next station is Camaron (39¼ miles). The road now crosses a plateau covered with basaltic bowlders. The so-called Spanish moss, or lichen, hangs from the trees, reminding the American tourist of the forests of Georgia and Florida.

Paso del Macho (47¼ miles) is the next stopping-place. Here the train begins to ascend a heavy grade. The track makes a wide curve around the base of the thickly-wooded Chiquihuite Mountain, and soon comes in sight of the cascade of the Rio de Atoyac. The adjacent region is covered with a dense tropical jungle, in which many species