Picturesque Mexico [pp. 307-318]

PICTURESQUE MEXICO.
closed, all the elements of luxurious living are complete within.
I say all the elements; and yet these lavish establishments lack
many things which we have been accustomed to consider neces saries for even moderate comfort. Neither chimneys for smoke
nor grates for fire in the tingling mornings ard nights; neither
hot-water pipes, nor set bowls, nor spring-beds, nor kitchenranges, nor scores of other common things belong to the menage
of a Mexican nabob. As a partial recompense their women do
not break down before thirty-five with nervous prostration.
There is no cloud but has its silver lining.
The very poor live within four walls of dried mud, on a floor
of the same material. Anywhere upon this a fire of mesquitewood may be kindled to bake the universal tortilla-almost the
sole food of a large class. A few crockery utensils for cooking
and eating, a hand-brush for sweeping, some water-jars and baskets, perhaps a bundle of maguey-fibres for a bed, and the furniture is complete. The serape is cloak by day and covering by
night; the floor is at once chair and table; the smoke flies out of
open door or four-paned window as it listeth-and that is all. Or
rather it is not all. For with it stays patience, kindliness, and
content-three graces hard to account for with such meagre
plenishing.
Broken by a succession of mountain-chains into almost parallel
divisions, the seemingly barren table-lands of which the surface
of the country is mainly composed burst into a wilderness of
bloom whenever and wherever water touches the soil. This
sharp contrast between luxuriant fertility and bare gray plains is
universal. The great isolated volcanic peaks, perpetually snowcrowned, are so situated that some one among them always dominates the landscape in the eastern or southernportions. Turning
toward Puebla, fields of maguey-a species of the century plant
of our greenhouses-cover the soil for hundreds of miles, a strik.
ing and most novel sight. Going still farther in the same direction, on the way to Vera Cruz one passes through an experience
that can have few equals on the face of the earth. After breakfast
at La Esperanza, with the mighty shadow of Orizaba rising but
seven miles distant, and the beautiful but stern form of Malinche
still nearer, one begins the descent toward the Terras Calientes.
In the early morning there is frost upon the roads, and frost in
the clear air tingling with cold from the snowy summits. At
noon the coffee plantations within the tropics are reached. The
atmosphere is redolent with fragrance of orange-blossoms; golden
[June,
3t4