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178 at all seasons an aspect singularly picturesque. During the rainy season, the winter of those favored climes, the sky, which loses its blue without losing its softness, floods the plains with fertilizing torrents. For several hours a day the Bajio is a vast lake, studded with tufts of verdure, with blue hills, with groups of white houses and enameled cupolas. On this sheet of water the green summits of the trees alone reveal to the traveler the capricious meanderings of the inundated road. Soon, however, the thirsty soil has imbibed the moisture through the innumerable cracks that eight months' drought has left in its surface. A layer of slime, deposited by the heavy rains and the torrents from the Cordillera, has enriched the impoverished earth. The heavens are clear and cloudless as before. The springs freed from the crust which obstructed them, gush out more abundantly from the foot of the ahuehuetl. The Peruvian-tree, the gum-tree, the golden-flowered huisache, amid whose blossoms the scarlet-plumed parrots scream, shade and perfume the now consolidated roads. The songs of muleteers and the bells of mules resound in the blue distance, mingled with the shrill creaking of cart-wheels. It is the time when the Indian laborer returns to his toils. Like the shepherd in the Georgics, with his leathern buskins, his short tunic, and bare legs, he lazily goads the oxen at the plow. And such is the fertility of this soil, that splendid crops cover the ground which the plow has scarcely furrowed. Still, it is not in the rich plain alone that nature has been most indulgent to the happy dwellers in the Bajio. Over the fertile