Page:Our Neighbor-Mexico.djvu/63

Rh The sides of these hills from base to peak are densely covered with trees, whose leaves are almost a solid mass of green. The white water leaps from this green centre a hundred or two feet, into a curling, foaming river, and into a darkling mirror of a pool. The whole scene is embraced in one small circumference, and you seem to pause trembling on the bridge that spans a side of the ravine, before you plunge into a tunnel, hanging hundreds of feet



above the lovely spectacle, with an admiration that is without parallel in any small fragment of American scenery. May the Mexican Government preserve the Falls of Atoyac and their enchanting surroundings from the knife and the factory of the spoiler.

Are there monkeys or wilder beasts in these woods, or parrots, or birds of paradise? Of course they will all tell you that they abound. But when you ask one if he ever saw any, he shrugs his shoulders.