Page:The Rambler in Mexico.djvu/100

94 whole country in the neighbourhood is under high cultivation. At Whitsuntide a great fair is held at the town, when thousands assemble hither from Mexico and the adjoining district. The lengths to which gambling is carried on at the monte tables of St. Augustin, at that season of festivity, are almost incredible. Many of the once wealthy families of this country have been beggared by giving themselves up to a taste for this witless game of headlong chance.

No language of mine can give you a just idea of the scene from the neighbouring heights. They command a view of vast extent over the southern portion of the valley, with the broad plain, the distant lakes Xochimilco and Chalco, various groups of volcanic hills in the middle ground, and the wall of mountains surmounted by the snowy summits of Iztaccihuatl and Popocatepetl on the horizon.

The Ajusco, a compact mass of porphyritic rock, soaring to the height of thirteen thousand feet above the Pacific, rises directly in the rear. It is the highest point of the eastern wall of the cordillera which girdles the valley.

In the view from this point, which I had more than once the opportunity of examining in detail, nothing struck me more than the great number of truncated cones and volcanic summits within sight.

Though there exists throughout this portion of the continent positive proofs of the agency of internal fire, in upheaving the whole of the table land of the Mexican cordillera to its present extraordinary level, an examination of the continent would seem to indicate that the forces set in action by igneous agency, have been more active in one particular direction than another; that is, along a nearly right line of no great breadth, enclosed between 18° and 20° of north latitude. Commencing with the volcano of San Martin de Tuxtla, on the shore of the gulf, thirty-six leagues south of Vera Cruz, and moving across the surface of the country, a little to the northwest you find in succession—the gigantic cone of Orizaba,