Page:Mexico, California and Arizona - 1900.djvu/180

 The water began to be charmingly clear, and the bottom was full of a red weed like coral. We gathered ferns, lilies, the fragrant little white flower of St. John—flor de San Juan, sold in large bunches in the market—and other flowers, yellow, purple, and vivid scarlet, of unknown names.

The clouds still hung threateningly about, and gave us now and then a slight sprinkle of rain. But as we drew near to Chalco and the end of our two days' voyage they cleared away.

The prospect from this point is the subject for a landscape painting of the grand order. The town of Chalco, with an ancient and noble church edifice, supplies the element of human interest. In front is the blue water in spaces, with their reflection, and a wealth of marsh plants, arrow and lance heads, ferns, and flowers. In the distance are the great snow-clad mountains, upon which wreathing mists throw changing lights and shadows. Ixtacihuatl, the White Woman, though the lesser, I continually find the more picturesque of the two, in its sharp and rugged outline. Popocatepetl, in the more perfect symmetry of its cone, is a little monotonous, like Orizaba.

We came, by a short branch canal, to the station of La Compañia, on the Morelos railway, and took the train back to town. We were just in time to hear of a disturbance near by by General Tiburcio Montiel, and his arrest by the Government forces. It was said that he had headed a communistic uprising of Indians for the recovery of their lands. He declared through the press afterward that he had but gathered a posse to aid him in the execution of some legal process. Quaint risings of a communistic sort, however, have not been uncommon. Demagogues have more than once told the simple-minded peons that the lands of the country were theirs—had been