Page:Travels in Mexico and life among the Mexicans.djvu/205

Rh luxuriant vines: orchids, oleanders, roses, honeysuckles, and convolvuli "make glad these solitary places," and tall yuccas, palms, and tree-ferns make them picturesque.

Rising higher and higher, the eye is bewildered by the vast number of vegetable forms that are massed upon the trees, the wild pines, air-plants, and hosts of ferns, bignonias with tints of sea-shells, orchids with spikes of blossoms, dragon plants, and an entire world of creepers and parasitic vines, unknown to any but the skilled botanist. Thus we pass through a zone unknown to us of the North, that has also forms not found in the low tropics. It is called the "temperate region" because of its delightful climate and equable temperature; but it not only combines the vegetation of two zones, but also the heat and moisture of the lowlands with the cool breezes and salubrious atmosphere of the temperate country.

Having traced the lapping of the two girdles in other places, in the lesser islands of the West Indies, and having noted and admired the blending of the two zones in this middle ground, I had long ago given this region (in imagination, before it passed under my eyes) the name of Tropic Border-land. The flowers here do not lose their scent, as some imagine; the birds are tuneful,—though some would have us believe to the contrary,—and the annoying insects less abundant than below. Paradise, if it can be located on this earth, will occupy a position in the tierra templada, in some belt half-way up a tropic mountain, whether in Mexico or in South America, in the West Indies or in the Himalayas, where altitude confers all the favors resulting from a change of country in other lands. There is no deadly disease here, as in the coast country; at an elevation of three thousand feet above the sea there is little danger from the vomito, and, except for local causes, other fevers seldom molest the inhabitants.

As far up as four thousand feet the sugar-cane, coffee, rice, tobacco, and banana may be raised; and all the fruits of the world, both the new and the old, may be produced here in greater or less perfection. Beyond this, vegetation is less luxuriant; the grains of the Old World, as wheat and barley, flourish best