Page:Mexico, picturesque, political, progressive.djvu/99

Rh swept billows, surrounded a nest of small valleys, that dimpled in a thousand forms of picturesque beauty as far as the eye could reach. Divided only by brilliant green hedges of the maguey, the climbing fields of rich brown soil, fresh ploughed for tillage, crept to the topmost point of the nearer heights; a rapid mountain stream, fringed with drooping willows, crossed here and there by rude bridges, ran through the centre, and fell like an arrow of light into the depths below. A steep mountain-path, up which a train of burros were painfully climbing, passed over the crest of the nearest hill to some farther valley beyond. The pink towers of an old church, half hidden in trees, rose in bold relief on the summit of one hill; on the slope of another, a ranche of adobe, with dull red roof, made a glorious bit of color; and over the most distant peak of all, the dense shadow of a departing thunder-cloud was smitten by one strong beam of brilliant sunshine, which broke, like Ithuriel's spear, into a thousand spark- ling points below.

Now and again a whirling sandspout rose in an airy column, far off on some gray desert-like plain, as we passed. A motionless fisher with his net,