Page:Mexico, California and Arizona - 1900.djvu/48

 nothing splintered and savage about it, as in Switzerland. It seems almost too tame at first—a sort of drawing-master's mountain—and, above the tropical landscape, is like snow in sherbet. The city of Orizaba is an important small place, the scene of a dashing surprise of the Mexicans by the French, at the hill of El Borrego. It has charming torrents, which furnish water-power for cotton and paper mills. One of these torrents, conveyed in an arched aqueduct, turns the machinery of the ingenio, or sugar plantation, of Jalapilla, once a country residence of Maximilian.

A delegation of relatives had come down the night before to await our young couple here. What embracing and chattering! A Mexican embrace has a character of its own. The parties fall upon each other's necks, as we are accustomed to see done on the stage. It is given, too, between mere acquaintances, almost as commonly as shaking hands.

A vivacious sister-in-law aimed to give the new-comer an idea of what was before her in her future home.

"Such flowers as I have in the court-yard!" she said, raising her eyes, with an expressive gesture; "such oranges, camellias, azaleas! Ah yes, indeed, I believe it well."

"And Jack?" inquired the husband, addressed as Prosper; "how always goes poor Jack?"

"Ah! he is dead," replied the vivacious sister-in-law.

"I regret to tell you, but so it is."

It appeared that Jack was a favorite monkey, and for a moment his untimely fate cast a certain gloom over the company. From the heights where we were little villages, with squares of cultivated fields around them, were seen at vast