Page:The Rambler in Mexico.djvu/66

60 The suffocating heat, the insect plagues, the unwonted food—what in fact had they been to us, compared to the sum of our enjoyments? We almost felt regret, while mounting the lofty mountain ladder which was to raise us to another and more temperate zone, that we were turning our backs upon such unparalleled beauty.

Nevertheless, if I would signalize one evening and one scene, during our ramble in New Spain, which touched our hearts more than another, I should name the Monte Penulco and the setting sun which we there beheld.

A desolate-looking stone building, in the vicinity of a poor rancho, divided by party walls into a number of comfortless lodgings, here furnished us with accommodation; and after seeing that all our retinue had followed us without accident, we left our horses to their repose, and sallied forth for a stroll.

The swelling crest of the Monte Penulco is said to have been at the time of the Spanish conquest, the site of a large town containing many thousand inhabitants. You look now in vain for the traces, either in the remnants of buildings, or inequalities of surface. A solitary stone ruin, of considerable strength, standing in the middle of the wide pastures, is the only vestige of old times; and that, I have no doubt, like many ruins in this part of the country, which are shown as Indian antiquities, is of Spanish origin. It may either have been a chapel erected for the edification of the new converts, or a fort constructed to overawe the Indian inhabitants.

In other respects, nature has reclaimed her own, and resumed her quiet sway over the Monte Penulco and its brethren, which exhibit throughout all their varied undulations of surface, an unbroken carpet of delicious verdure nurtured by the moist mists of the mountains, and beds of gentle flowers, fanned by the pure and elastic air of an eternal spring.

How sweet we felt the repose of that long still evening upon those green Alpine pastures! Well might we, as we lay at ease upon the fresh sod, and watched the sun sink among the mountains girdling the horizon, while his