Page:Our Neighbor-Mexico.djvu/244

234 Woods now appear, pine chiefly, not large, sprinkled over much space, and suggestive of a cold climate. We are over ten thousand feet above the sea; surely it has a right to be cold. For several miles we gradually slope downward, until suddenly the valley we seek opens at our feet, ablaze with the hottest beams. Clouds cover us, and make the sunny hollow of Cuernervaca look the warmer.

It is a bowl, at this height seemingly not ten miles from rim to rim, yet probably fifty would not pace its base. The bottom is not level, even at this height, but embossed, as it were, in many forms and colors. That curved knot, looking not unlike the cow's horn which its name signifies, lying not far from this side of the embracing hills, is Cuernervaca. A belt of emerald surrounds it, especially deep in color and in extent on its farther or lower side. A little farther on you see spots of a light and very brilliant green. They are patches here, but miles there, of the sugar-cane, portions of the sugar haciendas, the chief produce of the valley. One rarely sees such a vivid green. "Living green" indeed these fields stand dressed in, like those beyond the swelling flood and the rocky rampart of death.

The valley is small as compared with the Mexican, but not small of itself. It is hemmed in by mountains, the tall Popocatepetl forming its north-eastern tower. This looks uncommonly grand in contrast with the fiery beauty which it coolingly overshadows and protects, like a calm and loving father bending over his beautiful and passionate daughter.

We scamper down a horrible road; through an Indian town named Huachilaqui; down a steeper and more horrible road, amidst boulders tossed up from the never-mended pavement; jumping from rock to rock, almost, in our mad plunging; the ladies, perched above the driver, scared and delighted with the leaping coach and the glorious landscape. For two hours we thus go head-long, until the hollow is struck, and we race merrily on, still slightly descending, and run down the rattling pavements of the clean town, every door and window of which seems occupied, to note the