Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 28.djvu/751

Rh Mexico, is very heavy, although at an enormous reduction on the cost of all methods previously employed. When the road was first opened, the charges for first-class freight per ton were $76; second class, $65; and by passenger-trains, $97.77. Since the opening of, and under the influence of the competition of, the Mexican Central, these rates have been reduced to an average of about $40 to $15 per ton, and still the business is understood to be not especially remunerative. Begun in 1857, this road was not completed, owing mainly to the disturbed state of the country, until 1873. It was built under English supervision, and with English capital, at a cost, including equipment, of $39,000,000, and is solid and excellent throughout. During the year 1876 the road was destroyed at different points by the revolutionists, and all traffic for a considerable time suspended.

At the station "Esperanza," one hundred and fifty miles from the city of Mexico, on the farther side of a great sandy plain, and on the very verge of the plateau, and where the descent may be said to abruptly begin, the stations, engine-houses, and shops, built of dressed stone, are as massive and elegant as any of the best suburban stations on any of the British railways. And as illustrating how rigidly the English engineers adhered to home rules and precedents, the constructions at this station include a very elegant and expensive arched bridge of dressed stone, with easy and extended approaches, to guard against danger in crossing the tracks; although, apart from the persons in the employ of the company, the resident population is very inconsiderable.

Starting from this point in the early morning of the 27th of March, to make the descent to the comparatively level and low land intervening between the base of the plateau and the ocean, the ground at the station was white with hoar-frost, while behind it, apparently but a mile or two distant, and of not more than fifteen hundred to two thousand feet in elevation, rose the glistening, snow-covered cone of Orizaba. Within the cars, and even with closed windows, overcoats and shawls were essential. Within an hour, however, overcoats and shawls were discarded as uncomfortable. Within another hour the inclination was to get rid of every superfluous garment, while before noon the thermometers in the cars ranged from 90° to 95° Fahr., and the traveler found himself in the heart of the tropics, amid palms, orange-trees, coffee-plantations, fields of sugar-cane and bananas, almost naked Indians, and their picturesque though miserable huts of cane or stakes, plastered with mud and roofed with plantain-leaves or cornstalks. In the descent, Orizaba (17,373 feet), which at the starting-point, and seen from an elevation of about 8,000 feet, is not impressive in respect to height, although beautiful, gradually rises, and finally, when seen from the level of the low or coast lands, becomes a most magnificent spectacle, far superior to Popocatepetl, which is higher, or any other Mexican mountain, but, in the opinion of the writer,