Page:Our Sister Republic - Mexico.djvu/90

84 two thousand feet wide and fifteen hundred feet deep, with almost perpendicular sides, down which the road has been cut with infinite labor and paved at an immense expense. The descent into this Barranca on horseback is no trifling feat, and the beauty of the views at every turn is really wonderful. At places, the whole road is over-arched with trees and climbing vines, and on every hill-side the wealth of flowers is beyond imagination. Parrots in great flocks yelled at us from the trees, and little parroquets and other brilliant-hued birds, swarmed in the thickets all around. Mules, loaded with the produce of the country, met us at every angle of the road.

The scene, as the procession wound down the defiles into the bed of the Barranca and up the other side, the green palanquin swaying back and forth at the head, the brilliant uniforms of the officers and soldiers of the guard coming in and out among the trees in vivid