Page:Mexico, picturesque, political, progressive.djvu/103

Rh cloud bound beneath its shining brow, fills the eastern sky with glory. Every moment of descent changes the scene. Now it is a deep ravine sweeping downward a thousand feet, filled with pine and oak, mesquite and pepper trees; now a sudden leap into space, as if the solid earth had lapsed beneath one's feet and left one suspended in air, so slight is the frail supporting trestle-work; now a rocky, cloven gorge sweeping to dizzy heights and depths, while the crawling train clings to its rugged side like a fly creeping across a church wall. New kinds of vegetation bloom in clusters of scarlet bells in the crevices, and strange ferns in shaded spots; sparkling mountain water leaps in cascades, or plays hide and seek amid the shrubbery; and the swift-climbing mountains interlace in a network of spurs and slopes, around which the sturdy double-headed engine twists and turns, bounding down a grade that descends three thousand feet in twelve miles. Somewhere, always, the white height of Orizaba crowns the scene; but the curves of the road bring it first on one side, then on the other, until, "And the mountains skipped like lambs" becomes a fact instead of a figure in one's mind.