Page:Our Neighbor-Mexico.djvu/379

 Rh artificial mould thrown round a little pond of brackish water, I am looking at the setting sun and writing these rambling notes.

The rancho "has a pleasant seat." All around it tower magnificent mountains not far away, from two to five miles. They completely inclose it, except toward the south, where a green opening shows no end. Like the green sea, it lies on the horizon, only it is still, as that sea is not, and is touched at its sides with the hills of blue. The western ridges, where the sun is just descending, are black already with the shadow of night, the eastern glow richly in his rays. In blessings over the sleeping scene, a high and solitary peak just across this pond lifts its white castellated front like a venerable, bearded priest, and therefore not a Romanist, who is beardless as well as crownless. Off in that southern green ocean is a green cone, as perfect as a rounded pyramid—a Teneriffe covered with eternal spring.

To the north the hills, more distant, shine the brightest in the vanishing hues, while the sky above and along the northern side, and far around to the eastward, is still aflame. The valley itself thus superbly inclosed is a sea of green, all its white, bare, barren, disagreeable features being lost in this dying hour of the day, as all the bare, barren, disagreeable features of a life so often fade and disappear in its setting. As we drove up here, weary with the hot and long and dusty ride, and saw this white embankment and the white adobe of the rancho shining in the sun, with a half-dozen tall green willows standing guard over them, I was glad to welcome it as my home for the night, and to bless its name, Bonaventura (good coming), as prophetic of this advent. And now, as this lovely flush overspreads all the heavens, like a bloom and a smile on the cheek of the dying beloved—I have seen such, have not you?—I feel yet more like blessing the good angel that has brought me thus far happily over the burning and the brilliant, yet dangerous land. How that rose deepens, and rims the north with fire! Where did you, where could you ever see a grander setting? How vastly ahead of the tumultuous and fatal sea! Ah! you say, your land is tumultuous and fatal also. Those brown fellows, do