Page:Our Neighbor-Mexico.djvu/251

Rh and southward in green and brown and gold, and all around stand the comforting and strengthening hills.

But just adjoining is the fairest scene of all. Right under the castle to the south-west, in a ravine and on its inclosing banks and upper rims, lies a paradise of perfect green. It is half a mile to a mile long and wide. The trees are lustrous as velvet, and every tropical delight of herbage greets us from these clinging gardens. They were a part, probably, of the grounds of the castle. Here sat Cortez and enjoyed their fragrant breath, unless, like his successors, he preferred to enjoy that of his cigar. Here he plotted to return to power; annoyed those who ruled after him and over him; got up expeditions to Honduras and California at immense loss of life, money, and almost fame, including among his losses that of the four grand emeralds, the holding on to which too closely caused his first and chiefest loss: that of the city he conquered and the government he craved. The emeralds were lost in the Mediterranean, on an expedition to Africa with Gonzalez. If any body doubts it, let him go and pick them up. In his case, as in so many others, it was proved that

This exquisite valley, this lordly castle that has such "a pleasant seat," the thirty cities that paid tribute to him, the wife and children that revered him, the fame he had won and never lost, all these were nothing to "the hungry heart" that set him a-wandering even to his grave.

Let us get into these delectable bowers at the foot of the palace, where they rest and toil contented to this day, the self-same sort that rested and toiled contented in his day.

The debate as to the superiority of nature or art would never arise if you walked through the Empress's Garden, and then through that of the Indos. These lanes are as beautiful as England's, and that is giving them the highest praise. More beautiful in all save the dwellings of the people, and not much less so in that particular, for neither land lifts its peasant to his proper seat. Trees of every known and unknown sort line the roadway.