Page:Mexico, picturesque, political, progressive.djvu/152

150 The book, as one might expect from the reputation of its author, is full of fine, sonorous Spanish, glowing with descriptive eloquence and declamatory force.

"Liberty is like the sun. Its first rays are for the mountains; its dying splendor falls likewise upon them. No cry for freedom has first arisen from the plains, as in no landscape is the valley illumined before the heights which surround it. The remnant of the defenders of a free people flies ever to the crags and hills for final security, as the last light of the sun lingers upon the summits when the lowlands are veiled in obscurity." "Never were there heard, after these annihilating combats, the groans and cries of the wounded, which so often find a place in descriptions of deserted battle-fields. Our soldiers suffered and died without appeals for aid or lamentation over life; as heroes expire, valiant and resigned." "Toward the east, only a labyrinth of mountains, which, arid and desolate, lost themselves in the distance; infinite in form, suggesting inexpressible and awful contortions; full of deep, sad shadows, lonely, terrifying, like a sombre and tempestuous ocean, suddenly petrified with awe at the whisper