Page:History of the War between the United States and Mexico.djvu/317

Rh and then commences the ascent to the elevated plateau of Mexico. Here terminates the low level, — the land of the vanilla and cacao, of the banana, the orange and the sugar-cane, — glowing with the rich vegetation of the tropics, and its shady bowers and sequestered recesses vocal with the melodies of the mocking bird, and the thousand other songsters whose notes are trilled, softly and sweetly, from early morn till eventide. The traveller, as he climbs the steep sides of the Cordilleras, pauses on each terrace, and turns upon his steps, to gaze upon the broad expanse spread out beneath him, like a carpet of rare embroidery; — the tall coronals of the aloe, — the dahlia, the cactus, and the convulvulus, — ﬂowers blushing with every hue of the rainbow, — unfold their beauties at his feet; here a small streamlet, and there an ample river, shimmers through the leafy interstices of the luxuriant woodland; and there are groves, too, of palms, and cocoas, and sycamores, matted together with the waving festoons of unnumbered parasites, whose brilliant dyes fairly dazzle the vision of the beholder. With ravished senses he pursues his way to the interior, and as he lifts his eyes to the snow-crowned summit of Orizaba, it were not strange if he should fancy the mountain peak some hoary warder, whose locks were silvered with the frosts of age, keeping watch over the enchanted realm behind him.

After crossing the stream, the road continues its course to the north until it reaches the foot of the hills, when it turns abruptly to the east. A few hundred yards further on it changes its direction to the northwest, and after pursuing a circuitous course for nearly two miles, now ascending some difficult acclivity or thridding some narrow dell, and now surmounting a