Page:Face to Face With the Mexicans.djvu/477

Rh a broken aqueduct, against a setting of blue in the distant mountains.

The coffee tree, with rich, dark green leaves and bright red berries—resembling cranberries—grows side by side with oranges, lemons, bananas, the cocoa-palm and gorgeous flowers, all in tropical luxuriance, overhanging low adobe fences.

The coffee berry is not allowed to ripen on the tree, but when in the red state, the branches, laden with fruit, are cut and left for several weeks to dry in the shade. After this, women and children bark it, when it is ready for shipment.

The city is walled in by mountains, and during the months of February, March, and April—as I was told by an old inhabitant—is visited almost nightly by wind storms. According to our own experience these rival the wildest hurricanes.

Our rooms were on the north or front of the hotel, consequently adapted to give the wind full sweep. Sure enough, at midnight, the tropical storm came up without a note of warning—moon and stars shining brightly in a cloudless sky—but if the Furies had been let loose our terrors could not have been intensified. Panes of glass were shivered to atoms over our heads, doors were lifted from their hinges and thrown with violence to the floor; everything movable was tossed in wild confusion, and "las dos señoritas Americanas solitas" expected to find themselves in the morning gray-headed from fright.

In the midst of the awful din and hubbub of the storm the mocking-birds on the corridor added their shrill quota to the general confusion of sounds, and I was humorously reminded of the experience of Mr. William Henry Bishop at Cordoba, when he spoke of their "dulcet ingenuity," and declared that a "planing-mill or a foundry full of trip-hammers would be a blessing in comparison."

Orizaba had now lost interest to us, and at the right hour we went to the station, expecting to continue the journey to Vera Cruz and Jalapa, but hearing a rumor of yellow fever, we decided to return to the capital.

Meeting Father Gribbin on his way from the coast, and fearing to