Page:Mexico, picturesque, political, progressive.djvu/76

74 by the almost intangible softness of draperies of gray moss, festooned and swaying from limb to limb. Through this wood, shadowy as twilight even at midday, the carriage-road winds and mounts to the summit, whereon the castle and military academy are built. And standing on the terrace from which these arise, one looks for the first time across the Valley of Mexico.

In the natural order, there is nothing more wonderful than this scene for loveliness in the wide world,—nothing more calculated to intoxicate the soul with the simple glory of living, since earth still holds such beauty for eyes of man. How can one ever hope to bring before the sense that has not known it that fair green plain stretching from the marble terraces of Chapultepec forty miles away to the dim horizon? How paint that foreground of majestic cypress-trees, draped in shadowy moss, which adds an intangible softness to the dim forest aisles beneath; the long, bright fields of a valley fair as a dream of paradise, divided by hedges of shrubbery or walls of cactus, until the surface resembles an inwrought tapestry of emerald interwoven in myriad gradations of tint; the waving hedges, outlining country roads