the witchcraft that lies in a little good-humor, and a paper of cigarritos. Let no one travel through a Spanish country without them.
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About one o'clock, we had again mounted, and riding along a level road which winds through the table-land of the mountain-top, we passed the Cruz del Marquez, a large stone cross set up not long after the conquest, to mark the boundary of the estate presented by Montezuma to Cortéz. At this spot the road is 9,500 feet above the level of the sea, and thence commences the descent of the southern mountain-slope toward the Vale of Cuernavaca. The pine forest in many places is open and arching like a park, and covers a wide sweep of meadow and valley. The air soon became milder, the sun warmer, the vegetation more varied, the fields less arid—and yet all was forest scenery, apparently untouched by the hand of man. In this respect it presents a marked difference from the mountains around the Valley of Mexico, where the denser population has destroyed the timber and cultivated the land.
This road is remarkable for being infested with robbers, but we fortunately met none. We were probably too strong for the ordinary gangs—some fifty shots from a company of foreigners, with double-barrel guns and revolving pistols, being dangerous welcome. At the village where we breakfasted, there was an ugly-looking band of scoundrels who hung around our party the whole time we remained there, watching our motions and examining our arms. I cannot conceive a set of figures better suited to the landscape that village presented, than these same human fungi who had sprung up amid the surrounding physical desolation, and flourished in moral rottenness. Every man looked the rascal, with a beard of a month's growth, slouched hats, from under which they scowled their stealthy side-glances, sneaking, cat-like tread, and muffled cloaks or blankets, that but badly concealed the hilts of knives and machetes. None of these gentlemen, however, pursued or encountered us.
After a slow ride during the afternoon, we suddenly changed our climate. We had left the tierras frias, and tierras templadas (the cold and temperate lands,) and had plunged at once, by a rapid descent of the mountain, into the tierra caliente where the sun was raging with tropical fervor. The vegetation became entirely different and more luxuriant, and a break among the hills suddenly disclosed to us the Valley of Cuernavaca, bending to the east with its easy bow. The features of this valley are entirely different from those of the Valley of Mexico, for although both possess many of the same elements of grandeur and sublimity, in the lofty and wide-sweeping mountains; yet there is a southern gentleness and purple haziness about this, that soften the picture, and are wanting in the Vale of Mexico, in the high and rarefied atmosphere of which every object, even at the greatest distance, stands out with almost microscopic
