Page:Mexico, picturesque, political, progressive.djvu/102

100 This entails some altogether novel experiences. At Esperanza, in the early dawn, one leaves frost by the roadside, and a bracing air blown from the snowy brow of Orizaba, seven miles distant. A little tract of country outside the town reminds one of New England in June, but instantly the glimpse of home vanishes. At El Boca del Monte, or "The Mouth of the Mountain," after passing for some time through a rocky gorge, the train emerges upon what we would call a trestle-bridge, but which has been christened by these imaginative people in a phrase which explains itself, — El Balcon del Diabolo. The steeply sloping mountain-side leaps at one swift bound into the valley of La Joya, the Gem, three thousand feet below. A miracle of loveliness, full of deep, verdant beauty ; its rich fields stretching far up the precipitous sides of the opposite heights, with the tiny village of Maltrata, a mass of softly tinted walls and tiled roofs gathered around the spire of the parish church, — it glows like a jewel in the sunshine. Down the spurs of the hills, cataracts of stunted pines and grizzly cactus-bushes sweep like dark avalanches, broken in their course by splintered rocks; and Orizaba, a fillet of white