Page:Mexico as it was and as it is.djvu/67

 Indian Attica—when he beheld, I say, this tranquil scene at his feet, what must have been the avarice and the relentlessness of an unknightly heart that urged him onward to the destruction and enslavement of a civilized and unoffending people, whose only crime was, the possession of a country rich enough to be plundered to minister to the luxury of a bigoted race beyond the sea!

Our descent commenced from the eminence where we had halted awhile to survey the valley. Our coachman was an honest Yankee, fearless as the wild horses he drove, and they scoured along under his lash as if we had the level roads of New England beneath us. But, alas! we had not. I question whether there are any such roads elsewhere—in the world—nor can you conceive them, because your experience amongthe wilds of the Aroostook or the marshes of the Mississippi, can furnish no symptoms of such highways. They were gullies, washed into the mountain side by the rains; filled, here and there, with stones and branches; dammed up, to turn the water, by mounds a couple of feet high—and thus, gradually serpentining to the foot of the declivity. You may readily imagine that there was no such thing as rolling down with our rapid motion over such a ravine. We literally jumped from dam to dam, and rock to rock, and in many places where the steep is certainly at an angle of 45o, I must confess that I quailed at the impending danger while the horses bounded along as fiercely as if they bore Mazeppa. But the driver knew what he was about, and in an hour drew up at the Venta de Cordova, where, when I alighted, I found myself deaf and giddy from the heat, dust, and irregular motion. In a few moments, however, the blood poured from my head and I was relieved, though I felt ill and uncomfortable the rest of the day. Two of the other passengers suffered in the same manner.

The succeeding distance of about thirty miles lies along the level, and skirts a detached range of volcanic hills between the lakes of Tezcoco and Chalco, the same which I described, some time ago, as rising like ant-heaps from the plain. We passed the village of Ayotla, and through a number of collections of mud-walled huts and desolate hovels, buried up among palm-trees and fields of barley and maguey, (resembling the streets of ruined tombs near Rome;) but nowhere did I see any evidence of neat or careful cultivation, or of comfort and thriftiness. In this the valley of Mexico is, markedly, different from that of Puebla. Misery and neglect reigned absolute. Squalid Indians in rags exhibiting almost entirely their dirty bodies, thronged the road; miserable devils coming