Page:Mexico, picturesque, political, progressive.djvu/75

Rh away forever your idea of undiluted misery. For two hours, at least, each day, the world of fashion, of folly, and perhaps of pleasure, has its own way; and it is as giddy a way as wealth can make it. On Sundays and fête days a band adds very good music to the other attractions of the place, the reckless riders dash between the lines of carriages more madly than ever, the air is heavy with the perfume of flowers carried in every hand, and nothing more brilliant can be well imagined.

At the farther end of the Paseo, on the road to Tacubuya, rise the hill and palace of Chapultepec. The favorite pleasure-garden of Montezuma, this lovely spot owes its mixture of wildness and beauty as much to art as to nature. Rising abruptly on the side toward the city from the perfect level of the plain, it is surrounded by a forest of cypress, which is not surpassed for magnificence on this continent. The grand old trees, most of which must date back over twenty centuries, rise in sombre majesty above those of ordinary growth, interspersed among them, like a race of giants towering amid pygmies; and the dim aisles beneath their lower branches are made still more beautiful