Page:The Rambler in Mexico.djvu/58

 52 portion of the rock-strewn bed which overspreads a large extent of the low grounds. It is a tributary of the Tula, if my surmise is right. At the point where our pathway came upon it, the vale was comparatively open and spacious, though surrounded by mountains of considerable elevation, and there was much in the whole landscape which brought the scenery of the Italian Alpine valleys to my recollection; but four or five leagues higher up, shortly after the traveller has passed a large hacienda belonging to a wealthy cura on the left bank, it contracts; and, for the succeeding thirty or forty miles takes that peculiar character which has given a name to the river.

The fifth and sixth of March were occupied in advancing from the priest's country seat, slowly up the magnificent ravine, on a rough mule path, worn by the numerous conducta, with which this is one way of descent from the table land above; threading thickets which struggled with the limpid mountain stream for possession of the chasm, and often riding along the bed of the river, which I believe had to be crossed considerably above a hundred times.

We considered the scenery of the Cañada superior to any we had ever seen, comparable to it—and we were, as you know, no novices in mountain defiles, I nowhere met with the sublimity of an Alpine mountain gorge on a great scale, clothed with such beauty. A varied vegetation, stimulated by the alternate vehemence of a tropical sun, and the gentle dews and moist showers from the mountains above, into an inconceivable rankness and richness of growth—all that is beautiful and gorgeous in colouring and curious in detail—birds, butterflies, insects, fruits, and flowers—are here presented to the eyes of the traveller, in the midst of a chaos of rent and riven rock and dizzy precipice, which would be worthy of the most savage defile of the most savage Alpine districts of Europe. No one who has not beheld with his own eyes, can imagine the vigour with which nature puts forth her strength under this incitement from alternate heat and moisture.