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248 the higher country: all the pores are opened at once, and the general relaxation of the system necessarily renders them peculiarly susceptible of disease. Few of the muleteers of the Interior will descend lower than Jalapa during the hot months, (from the end of April to the beginning of October,) and when they do, it is lamentable to see the poor wretches, as I have done more than once, actually dying upon the road. When they can no longer sit their mules, they stretch themselves out under the first tree or shrub that will afford them protection from the sun, wrap up their heads in their blankets, and meet their fate with that composure, which, in every part of the New World, seems to be one of the characteristics of the Indian race.

During this season, the Government couriers are changed at Jalapa, and no one, who is not compelled to do so by business of the most urgent nature, thinks of visiting the Tierra Caliente. Commerce is nearly at a stand; and it is only upon the approach of the autumnal equinox that business begins to be again transacted with any sort of activity. From the middle of October till the end of March, if the winter be not unusually mild, Veracruz, though never a safe, is at least not a very dangerous residence.

The Nortes, though inconvenient for the shipping, are infinitely preferable to the almost certain destruction of the crew with which the fatigue of unshipping the cargo of a merchant-vessel in summer