Page:Our Neighbor-Mexico.djvu/194

184 One feels a growing respect for that general as he stands among these scenes of his career, even if one American traveler has sought to belittle his achievements, and to make his conquest of the Aztecs a mere brush of trained troops with untrained savages. Our trained troops had many years of hard service ere they rooted out the untrained savages of Florida, and have not yet subdued those of the West. But this general in a year and a half brought these organized and warlike Aztecs into such submission that they have never raised their heads in rebellion since. And they are vastly superior in every respect, military included, to the Indians of our frontier. They are the soldiers of the republic, and can fight as well as the soldiers of France, as they showed in this very Puebla, where they won one of their brilliant battles against their invaders, and made the 5th of May famous in their annals. It was something to subdue such a people.

Turn now due west, and fill your gaze with the grand Snow Range. It is all embraced at a glance. Unlike the Alps, which you can never see around, these Mexic Alps are all compassed at once. You can see where they leave the plains, and where they come back to them. You can ride clear around them if you please. From the first breaking of the soil on the east, between Malinche and Tlascala, you go gradually up to Iztaccihuatl, descend enough to allow a pass across to Mexico—the pass which Cortez and Scott crossed—climb again the steeper, taller, smoother, and handsomer sides of Popocatepetl, and "coast" down his western side into the valleys and lakes that come between him and the Toluca range, of which Ajusca is the chief peak—a range that shuts in Mexico city on the south.

I leave you looking at this complete picture while I look at this grand bell and its half-dozen smaller sisters; for the clock is about to strike. Three times a power below pulls back that huge copper hammer before it lets it fall on the huger rim, to send forth a thunderous tone that makes us look to our ears, and almost fear that we shall have no further use for these rudimental wings, as Mr. Darwin might call them, did he choose to detect in man a descent