Popocatepetl, like the Silberhorn from the Jungfrau, at Interlaken. The streets are clean, and the houses almost all neatly lime-washed in white or colors. The market-place is a scene for an opera—a long arcade, full of bright figures; behind this is a group of churches and court-yards; behind these the vast snow mountains, as at Chalco, but nearer. A little hill at the left, across a strip of maize-fields, is called the Sacro Monte, and has a sacred chapel of some kind. I climbed thither while the negotiations for horses and guides were in their first tedious stage, and found a quaint Christ in the chapel, and a most engaging view from its terrace.
II.
We set off with a captain, or chief guide, who called himself Domingo Tenario, and a peon guide, Marcellino Cardoba, who had worked three years at sulphur-mining in the volcano, he also acted as muleteer. We had four horses and a mule the whole for eight dollars a day. Domingo Tenario would also ascend the mountain for a dollar more. We were to be gone three days, the greater part of which the expedition consumes.
The first part of the way wound among softly undulating slopes, yellow with barley, out of which projected here and there an ancient pyramid, planted with a crop also. By the roadside grew charming white thistles, tall blue lupines, and columbines. We crossed arroyos, brooks, and barrancas, gorges. The aspect changed to that of an Alpine pasture. There were bunch grass, tender flowering mosses, and cattle feeding. An eccentric dog, who was attached, it seemed, to one of the horses, and had the ambition to ascend the mountain also, instead of saving his strength for it, here ran up and down and
