Page:Mexico, picturesque, political, progressive.djvu/107

Rh in silent intensity; the castor-plants, grown to large trees, with long spikes of blossoms and pendant sheaths of berries, looked as if they needed no further refinement of furnace to reduce them to oil; yet the laborers worked on, in sun or shade, as the case might be, as if a temperature of a hundred and twenty-five degrees was a normal condition.

The fervor and glow of this tropical country is incredible to one who has never experienced it. Earth seems to have revelled in a thousand fantastic forms of frolic life in mere wantonness. Every hair's-breadth of soil is covered with a tangle of rare and strange forms; interlacing vines leap from tree to tree, and luxuriant parasites cling to the boughs as if jealous of filling every open space. Lavish blossoms, in gorgeous masses of red and yellow, glow alike on tree and shrub, until one almost fancies the forests filled with the gaudy plumage of birds, so large and striking are the separate blossoms. Here and there, as in the falls of the Atoyac, the water breaks through some mountain-gap, to bury itself in a fathomless depth of verdure below, and a rich, sensuous delight holds one enthralled in a delicious languor.