Page:The Rambler in Mexico.djvu/221

Rh a flowing mantle, with its silver and purple folds and its fringe of ice.

There are again, for the reason stated, few positions in which your eye will command, at the same time, the rich and gorgeous vegetation of the lower slopes of the Mexican Cordillera, and the sublimity of the superior ranges. The vast sheets of the barren table land are interposed, the tierras templadas separate the calientes from the frias. Each has its peculiar characteristics, but they can seldom, if ever, be comprised in one and the same picture.

You look in vain among all the exuberant forest growth and the giant flora of Mexico, for the sweet cheering freshness of Alpine vegetation; that luxuriance without rankness, which clothes the lower valleys.

From this you will see, that where the two chains might be supposed to have points of resemblance, they have little or none.

Besides that, in the style of its vegetation, both in the torrid and temperate regions, the plains and their peculiar characteristics, the prodigious barrancas, the whole series of volcanic phenomena, which prevade the country, from the sands of the coast to the craters of the highest volcanoes, as well as in colouring, the more prominent features of Mexico are so marked and so utterly different, that they extinguish the idea of comparison.

Suppose us now at Jalapa, a picturesque town situated high upon the broken sides of the huge mountain rampart which serves as a base for the great chain of the eastern branch of the Cordilleras. A lovelier sight, and more beautiful scenery, you need not seek in the torrid zone! Below you, a steep descent leads rapidly down the verdant and fresh slopes, towards the shore of the gulf, which is just visible from the highest parts of the town, at the distance of twenty leagues and upward. Above you rises ridge above ridge, crowned by the Coffre de Perote; and yet farther to the southward, by the magnificent snow-covered summit of Orizava, in