Page:Our Sister Republic - Mexico.djvu/284

272 in the ancient city, to-day. In front of us was the fair Capital of the Republic, with its many towers and steeples, and white-walled palaces, and the beautiful lakes beyond, glistening in the bright autumn sun of the tropics.

To the north-east, beyond the city, was Guadaloupe, and the villages along the shores of Lake Tezcoco. Nearer by, off a little to the left, not far from the great aqueduct of San Cosme,—which, oh Vandalic outrage! is now being demolished to give place to a railroad track—is the Church of the Noche Triste, and the great tree in which Cortez hid on the night of his disastrous retreat from Mexico. To the right, Tacubuya, with its monument to the honor of the brave men who fell in the defense of Mexico against the American Army under General Scott, and the scene of many a fearful deed of blood and outrage. Behind the castle, the red-walled and flat-roofed "Molino del Rey," where so many gallant American soldiers laid down their lives; and further south, the battle-fields of Contreras and Churubusco.

The valley of Mexico, with its surrounding mountains, forms a perfect amphitheater, of which Chapultepec is the "dress-circle." Popocatepetl, the white, headed old monarch of all the mountains of North America, towers in everlasting grandeur high into the blue heavens, in the south-east, and "the Woman in White"—his glorious spouse—stands beside him like a royal bride at the altar. Every foot of the ground within the limit of our vision is historic, and around it clings nearly the entire romance of the New World.

Inexpressibly lovely, is the prospect from the verandahs of Chapultepec, turn which way you will, and I