Page:Our Sister Republic - Mexico.djvu/104

98 we stood, to the very limit of the vision in the eastward, was a magnificent valley, divided into farms with neat hedges and fences, and dotted with mesquite and other trees, giving it the appearance of one vast orchard and garden. Fields of tall corn, now almost ripe for the harvest, waved through all the valley, and here and there the white walls and red roofs of large haciendas and village churches were seen through the embowering foliage. Far away, in the north-east, were the mountains which cut off the valley from Lake Chapala, and northward rose a range of magnificent mountains—a spur of the great Sierra Madre—green to the summit, and checkered, here and there, with lighter green fields of corn. The long Laguna de Seyula stretched through the valley on its north-eastward side, and villages could be seen all along its banks. The bright sun shone down on all this peaceful scene, as it does in June in the United States, and the dark shadows of the flying clouds drifted like the moving figures of a panorama over valley, village, and mountain. But for brigands, and revolutions, and foreign invasions, this would be an earthly paradise—

We descended, at a gallop, into the valley of Seyula, the long line of our military escort, with their dashy uniforms and glistening muskets, stretching far out in the rear, and passed through a small village, inhabited mostly by people of Indian descent, who regarded us with unrestrained curiosity, but great respect, doffing their hats and saluting us with the pleasant compliments of the country, as we passed.