Page:Mexico in 1827 Vol 2.djvu/197

Rh form a scene far superior to any that we had met with since our landing. Nothing can be more monotonous than the general character of the country from Veracruz to the Puente; the sand-hills do not indeed extend above three miles into the interior, but for some leagues there seems to be a struggle between vegetation and sterility. Patches of a rich and luxuriant green are intersected by long intervals of rocks and sand, nor is it until you reach Pāsŏ Ovējăs, that any thing like regular cultivation is discovered. There we passed the ruins of a large Sugar Hacienda, which had been abandoned during the Revolution, and saw evident traces of a rich and productive soil. But on leaving the river to which this fertility is due, we again found ourselves in a sandy desert, where little but the Mimosa was to be seen, except in spots where some apparently insignificant stream called into existence, at once, the luxuriant vegetation of the Tropics. In these we were quite bewildered by the variety of plants, all new to the European eye, and generally thrown together in such fanciful confusion, that the most experienced botanist would have had some difficulty in classing them; for, as each tree supports two or three creepers, the fruits and flowers of which bear no sort of proportion in point of size to the slender branches of the mother plant, it is not easy to distinguish them, at first sight, from the produce of the tree to which they cling. The air is quite perfumed at times with this