Page:Our Neighbor-Mexico.djvu/83

 Rh in his appearance and Iztaccihuatl. (I want you to learn to pronounce these, so I keep inserting them. Do not skip them; they are very easy when you get the hang of them. Take them just as they look, and look at them that you may take them, remembering that "hu" is like "wh.") How quiet and grand they look in their glittering whiteness; the former a rounded dome of the Orizaba type, the latter a range of peaks, with less form and comeliness. "Our Emily" lights her cigarette, and smokes as calmly as the smoking mountains, which do not smoke. I have seen no sign of a volcano in any of them. She is from near Strasbourg; and when she was told she was no longer French, but German, "No, no!" she exclaimed; ''Français toujours! L'Allemand barbare"'' But she was not French forever, and if Germany is barbarous, it succeeds.

The Indian village of Tepeaca is soon entered. A town when Cortez landed, and all Indian to-day, as is about all the rest of the country, it was a favorite place for him to retreat upon, and had no small influence in deciding his fortunes. It looks to-day as if it never could have influenced the fortune of the lowest nature, much less that of this lordly invader.

Soon the flame-shots come. The sun breaks suddenly and superbly on the black and weary night. Never before did I so feel the power of that other verse sung at the grave's mouth, the beginning of the night of death,

What a shout will ring through the universe when that day triumphs forever over that long, long night of dusty death!

A cup of chocolate and a fresh roll, served by Indian dames, and we rattle down hill twenty-five to thirty miles, to Puebla. The fields open wide to the bases of the P. and I. aforesaid. You can pronounce them if they are not printed in full. Corn-stalks are standing in the fields, and in some instances the corn is being gathered. Melinchi, a high mountain anywhere but here, rises on our right, opposite the snow volcanoes. It is named for the