Page:Mexico as it was and as it is.djvu/48

 with fallen trunks, aloes and agaves. Thus the road gradually ascended among desolation, until we reached a height where the clouds were lodged on the mountain tops, and a cold, drizzling rain filled the air. In this disagreeable manner, travelling among the clouds, we reached the village of St. Michel, and afterward La Hoya, over a road paved with basalt. From the latter place the scenery is described as magnificent when the day is clear, and the sun is out in its brilliancy. The vapor is said to be then spread out below you like a sea, and the mountain tops and little eminences peer above it like so many islands.

We passed through the village of "Las Vigas," described by Humboldt, as the highest point on the road to Mexico. The houses in this neighborhood are of different construction from those below the mountains, and are built of pine logs, each tree furnishing but one piece of timber of four inches thickness, and the whole width of its diameter; these are hewn with the axe, and closely fitted. The floors of the dwellings are laid with the same material, and the roofs are shingled. As the houses indicate a colder climate than the one through which we have recently travelled, so does also the appearance of the people, who are hardier and more robust than the inhabitants of the plains skirting the sea.

After winding along the edge of the mountain for some hours, we obtained an occasional view of the plain of Perote, level as the ocean, and bounded by the distant mountains. The Peak of Orizaba again appeared in the southeast, while the Coffre of Perote towered immediately on our left, and, seemingly in the midst of the plain, rose the Peak of Tepiacualca. Beyond it, on the remotest horizon, was sketched the outline of the snow-capped mountains. All these plains have doubtless been the basins of former lakes; but they now appear dry and arid, and it is not easy to distinguish how far they are cultivated at the suitable season. During the summer, they present a very different prospect, and, losing the guise of a waste moor, only fit for the sportsman, put on a lively livery of cultivation and improvement, far more agreeable than the dark and thorny maguey and the wilted foliage of dwarfish trees, with which they are now mostly covered. We occasionally see the stubble of last year, but the chief agriculture is evidently carried on upon the slopes and rising ground, where the irrigation is more easy from the adjacent mountains and is not so rapidly absorbed as in the marshy flats.

We had not travelled this road without our usual dread of thieves. Our guns were constantly prepared for attack, and we kept a wary watch, although during nearly the whole day we were accompanied by a party of lancers, who clattered behind us on nimble horses. Some leagues from Perote we approached the "Barranca Seca," a noted haunt of the ladrones; and as we came, within gunshot of the place, a band of horsemen dashed out from the ruins of an old hacienda on our right and galloped directly to the carriage. The mist had again come down in heavy wreaths around us, obscuring the prospect at a dozen yards distance; and the guard of troopers had fallen considerably in the rear. What