Page:Mexico, picturesque, political, progressive.djvu/108

106 It is paradise for the body, but it is too much for the soul. Spiritual strength weakens before this luxurious mass of material force. I cannot conceive of great work being done in this seductive world. Beautiful as Circe, it is the mortal, and not the immortal, to whom its fascinations appeal.

This memorable day, which began at a temperature of thirty-two degrees, and climaxed at noon with a white heat of ninety-seven degrees in the shade; with its unequalled experience of temperate zones and tropic; with its gallery of pictures, which stamped themselves like instantaneous photographs on tenacious memory, — was made more memorable yet by the most wonderful succession of cloud effects about Orizaba in the early eventide. While the valley through which we were passing was dark with night shadows, the dome-like summit, radiant with crimson sunset-glow, lifted its glorious, shining head into the pure, pale air, while a dense mass of cloud swept between it and the lordly base, lost already in the growing darkness. It transcended all we had yet known of mountain scenery, and its nearness made the towering height stupendous.