Page:Mexico as it was and as it is.djvu/66

 Conceive yourself placed on a mountain nearly two thousand feet above the valley, and nine thousand above the level of the sea. A sky above you of the most perfect azure, without a cloud, and an atmosphere so transparently pure, that the remotest objects at the distance of many leagues are as distinctly visible as if at hand. The gigantic scale of everything first strikes you—you seem to be looking down upon a world. No other mountain and valley view has such an assemblage of features, because nowhere else are the mountains at the same time so high, the valley so wide, or filled with such variety of land and water. The plain beneath is exceedingly level, and for two hundred miles around it extends a barrier of stupendous mountains, most of which have been active volcanos, and are now covered, some with snow, and some with forests. It is laced with large bodies of water looking more like seas than lakes—it is dotted with innumerable villages, and estates and plantations; eminences rise from it which, elsewhere, would be called mountains, yet there, at your feet, they seem but ant-hills on the plain; and now, letting your eye follow the rise of the mountains to the west, (near fifty miles distant,) you look over the immediate summits that wall the valley, to another and more distant range—and to range beyond range, with valleys between each, until the whole melts into a vapory distance, blue as the cloudless sky above you.

I could have gazed for hours at this little world while the sun and passing vapor chequered the fields, and sailing off again, left the whole one bright mass of verdure and water—bringing out clearly the domes of the village churches studding the plain or leaning against the first slopes of the mountains, with the huge lakes looming larger in the rarified atmosphere. Yet one thing was wanting. Over the immense expanse there seemed scarce an evidence of life. There were no figures in the picture. It lay torpid in the sunlight, like some deserted region where Nature was again beginning to assert her empire—vast, solitary and melancholy. There were no sails—no steamers on the lakes, no smoke over the villages, no people at labor in the fields, no horsemen, coaches, or travellers but ourselves. The silence was almost supernatural; one expects to hear the echo of the national strife that filled these plains with discord, yet lingering among the hills. It was a picture of "still life" inanimate in every feature, save where, on the distant mountain sides, the fire of some poor coal-burner, mingled its blue wreath with the bluer sky, or the tinkle of the bell of a solitary muleteer was heard from among the dark and solemn pines.

What a theatre for the great drama that has been performed within the limits of this valley! When first stood upon these mountains, and looked down on the lovely scene, peaceful then and rich under the cultivation of its Indian children; the hills and plains covered with forests, and much of what is now dry land hidden by the extensive lake, in the midst of which rose the proud city of the Aztec kings filled with palaces and temples; in site, another Venice on its inland sea; in art, the