Page:Our Neighbor-Mexico.djvu/115

Rh, nor seemingly very high, but into a ragged rim covered with snow. You are surprised to find so low a horizon covered with perpetual ice. Yet there it lies, not so low after all. It is ten thousand feet above this seat, and nearly eighteen thousand above the gulf, that reclining Lady of the Skies, who rejoices in the unpronounceable name of Iztaccihuatl. I have heard all sorts of people seek to speak this word, and never heard two agree. So call it as it looks, or call it Big I, which it undoubtedly is. You see her head, neck, chest, robes, and feet, white-slippered, "with the toes turned up at the daisies" of the stars, with a long trail sweeping beyond, as becomes this White Woman, which that hard name means.

The southern side of this snow range drops off to a sharp and snowless ridge, where the pass lies over which Scott and Cortez marched. Narrow as it looks, it is probably several miles before that valley is crossed and the magnificent dome and peak of Popocatepetl rounds itself up into a superb cone of lustrous ice. Down it glides on the farther side into those brown rims on which we first gazed, and thus sails round the circle of this view. These snow peaks are thus a not extravagant part of the landscape. They do not stretch suddenly and extraordinarily above their fellows. They are primi inter pares. A fall of rain here at this season will make all this high ridge snow. It was so last week, but the snow was gone ere noon, except from the two head centres. The king and queen reign (or snow) perpetually.

The torrid sun, it would seem, ought to burn off their mantle. You can not sit in it now half an hour. It burns on the knees like a burning-glass. I must retreat to the shadow of a tall stone bass-relief lifted up at the front of the roof, and at the foot of a headless statue, once a Magdalene, I judge, conclude this portrait.

It shows how high they are, and how distant also, not less than sixty miles away, if you notice that range of cliffs that lies between them and us. They, too, are well lifted up, and they crouch as lions at the base of these mighty powers.

See the volcanic origin also. The craters are visible of these