Page:Travels in Mexico and life among the Mexicans.djvu/408

400 dirty, thatched, its only adornment being pottery of various patterns and colors, the meal was hustled on to the table in a most unceremonious manner, and the driver drew his sustenance from the fire before it reached us; yet we grumbled not, for the table-cloth was clean.

As we went on we were met by numerous Indians, bearing heavy loads upon their backs, on their way to the market at Mexico. They were cheerful, though taciturn, and they excited my wonder at their endurance, some of them making a distance of sixty miles to market. When arrived at their destination they sell their burdens for a few reales, scarcely ever more than a dollar or two, and trudge home contented, after filling their skins full of pulque. The loads they carried were crates of tomatoes and pumpkins; one had a couple of dozen fowls, another a load of parrots, fifteen in number, for which he asked two reales each. Some of these carriers have made (without burdens) the distance from Acapulco to Cuernavaca, eighty leagues, in seven days.

The last view of the valley of Mexico is cut off just before La Guardia is reached, and about two leagues beyond is the famous Cruz del Marques, the stone cross marking the boundary line of the former possessions of Cortés; and this landmark is at a point 9,700 feet above the sea. A great pine forest mantles the ridge, through which the coach bowls merrily, accompanied by the guard,—for "road agents" here watch their opportunity with an eye to business,—and said "guard," of four soldiers, in straw hats and ragged cotton garments, carrying rusty and antiquated muskets, is forced to shuffle along on foot at a lively gait, or get left behind to the tender mercies of the bandits.

The pine forests of these mountains are all alike, resembling the "parks" of Arizona and New Mexico, with great trees, cloud reaching, and a soil thinly covered with grass. Not far beyond the Cruz del Marques, the descent begins into the valley of Cuernavaca and towards the western coast. This descent, from the plateau to the tierra caliente, is more abrupt than on the eastern slope, and consequently we dash at once from one zone