Page:Our Neighbor-Mexico.djvu/288

 278 This law exists even in postas. The last was so luxurious, I properly dreaded the one to come. I did not dread it too much. It was dreadful beyond description. We met it almost the instant we left the gate of Señor Palmillas. It was our descent into the Valley of San Juan. For six miles we plunged hither and thither over the rocky slabs and boulders and the gullies around them. The soil is worn away by the rain and the coach, and no attempts are made to build up an even pathway. It would not be difficult to make a pleasant drive-way down the hill; but mañana (to-morrow), and no denario (money), combine to make every hill-road I have seen in Mexico a torture to man and mule. The roads not ten miles from the capital that descend the hills into the city, and are frequented with teams and travel, are in the same condition. The landscape tries to soften the travel. It comes as a poultice to our bruised limbs. In the midst of the upheavals from beneath, we catch glimpses of a valley that shall soothe us for our tossings.

It is green with trees and fields, and stretches out along the base of the embracing mountains for a score miles and more. A mountain of a peculiar type comes into the landscape. It is off to our right, a cone of yellow rock with sub-cones truncated half up its sides. Alone it stands, not being connected with the ranges of ordinary volcanic hills that everywhere meet the eye in all these uplands. It seems a creation of another sort. Its color, shape, and solitariness are all its own. It stands back of the regular rim of the valleys, and looks at us through the openings between the hills. It may be fifty miles away, probably more. It is worth visiting, and were I here long enough I would make an excursion to the Lone Yellow Cone beyond the prairie of Cazadero and the hills of San Juan.

The road gets over its madness, or we over the road, and we scamper down, not easily, into the beautiful valley, reminding one of that finest line, rhythmically speaking, in all "Evangeline," which has many hexameters as musical as Homer's, as the world will find out when Longfellow is dead. How presumptuous of Bryant to