Page:Travels in Mexico and life among the Mexicans.djvu/226

218 in the morning cold and glittering, in the evening hidden by clouds.

The peak of Orizaba, according to Humboldt, attains to a height of 17,378 feet. Though not so accessible as Popocatapetl, which is four hundred feet higher, Orizaba has been several times ascended. The first ascent was by a party of American officers, in 1848; and the second, by a Frenchman, Alexander Doignon, in 1851, who found a staff with the date 1848 cut into it, and the tattered remains of a United States flag. Till then it was regarded as wholly inaccessible, and it was not until the gallant Frenchman made a second attempt (which nearly cost him his life) that the wondering natives could credit him, and award the honor of the first achievement to the modest Americans. The starting point for the peak is from the little village of San Andres, near the base of the cone, some of the inhabitants of which obtain ice from the summit.

The God of the Air, Quetzalcoatl, after shaking the dust of Cholula from his shoes, and having died on the coast of Goatzcoalcos, was brought to the peak of Orizaba, and his body consumed by fire. His spirit took its flight toward heaven in the shape of a peacock, and since that time the burning mountain has borne the name of Ciltlaltépetl, or Mountain of the Star.

The next station of importance is San Marcos, one hundred and fifty miles from Vera Cruz, where the narrow-gauge railroad from the latter city to Puebla and Mexico, by the way of Jalapa, crosses the Ferrocarril Mexicana. We are now in Tlascala, that little state whose heroic people, at war with Montezuma at the time of the arrival of the Spaniards, tested their invincibility in a terrible battle. Being defeated, they made a treaty with the white strangers, subsequently saving them from annihilation. We shall meet the conquistadores again, as we visit Tlascala, Cholula, and Mexico; they are only mentioned in this connection because, somewhere on these plains, and probably in this vicinity, we cross their line of march.

Across these sandy plains, environed by chalky hills above which rises the isolated peak of Malinche, sometimes may be