Page:Our Neighbor-Mexico.djvu/350

338 road, and this succeeds for a few rods, and shows what might be everywhere, were a little constant care kept up. It soon gets tired of being good, like a spoiled and wayward child, and cuts up badly, as such a child is apt to do after its fit of momentary excellence. It goes round the spurs of hills staggering fearfully, and makes us, who are two only, stagger as bad as the road and worse. There are two ways to arrange for traveling safely over rough regions: one is to make the road good, the other to make the coach strong. They prefer the latter course here, or rather the diligence company do that for the preservation of their custom and coaches. So you have no fears, how much soever you are knocked about, that the coach will be knocked to pieces. It is made to stand, and it will stand. Never a lesion have I seen in these hundreds of leagues of travel, and over intolerable ways. They tumble into holes, whirl and toss and heave among loose boulders, or rocks in situ, down hill and up, trembling sometimes like a ship struck by mighty waves, but never springing a leak, or shivering a timber, or loosening a brace. They reel out of the rocky gulfs, and are off on a gallop in an instant, if road permits.

These low but tortuous and tossing hill-sides open shortly on another valley more attractive to the eye than the one just left, in that this is full of foliage. As far as the eye can see, it is one mass of feathery green. But all is not gold that glitters, or silver, even in Mexico, and this fascinating woodland turns out to be cheap mesquite and cheaper nopal, or cactus, that are growing wild. It is an uncleared forest. Still, an uncleared forest is a novelty here as well as in most of the United States, and will soon be in all parts of both countries; so I like it perhaps none the less.

The mesquite is not unlike the Peru, and both resemble in some sort our willow, except that these grow everywhere, the dryest places suiting the Peru just as well as the moistest. It spreads like the apple and peach, though lighter of trunk than the former, and not so loose in the lay of its limbs as the latter. It bears a pod, which is sought as an esculent. These woods are encompassed with high bare hills, those on the left hand being not over a league from the