Page:Our Neighbor-Mexico.djvu/411

Rh have badly spoiled the roads had it done so, for the rain and the soil make a black and pitchy mixture which is well-nigh untraversable. I greeted it as an old friend, despite the fear that it might stick a good deal closer than we desire the best of old friends, all the time, to do. But the sun got the mastery of it, and of every thing else, and blazed away without let or hinderance. At the end of eleven leagues we made the town of Morin, a white and blistering place, its sun-dried adobe still reproducing the sun too dazzlingly. No trees, no shaded walks, no pleasant fruit and farm-trading plaza—only a white heat. A cup of coldish water was its only relief.

One hardly expected to find even so agreeable a town; for an almost perfect desolation preceded it for many miles. The chaparral everywhere abounded, tall and briery. A clearing or two showed that the land was fertile, and only wanted inclosing and clearing up to be very fruitful. Cattle and horses and sheep were wandering among the chaparral, finding good herbage. The land did not look like Mexico. It was not high, hilly, or dry. It was moist, bushy, wild, and naturally and easily productive.

Nor did the people look like Mexicans. They had the Yankee hat and look, head-gear and complexion, every thing but the Yankee log-hut; but their ranchos are as bad, so the equality of resemblance continues.

From Morin you begin to get a view of the general lay of the land. Leaving out that low sierra in front of us, which we shall soon circumvent and omit from the scene, you note, as the characteristic, that it slides off in successive terraces, miles wide. It began at Monterey, eight hundred feet above the Gulf. It declines gradually to the sea-level. Probably half of it is made at this place.

The mesas, or tables, as these land spreads are called, are broad and level, and from them you see a lower but not low valley, wider than themselves, spreading out for scores of miles, until its green is lost in the blue of the sky. As you descend easily and by very short falls into this lower valley, you find that it is not a complete