CHAPTER V
ON THE SOUTHERN SLOPE
Passing away from the city on the way to Toluca, a landscape of enchanting loveliness, with some new features both in vegetation and architecture, unfolds itself. The mesquite takes the shape of our apple-trees, only with a more delicious green; the vegetable gardens are as delicate and fresh as flower patches; the houses look like Swiss chalets, or the huts built along the Norwegian Alps, with broad overhanging roofs held down by great stones. The hills become remarkably steep; and the sudden down-dropped valleys stretch their cultivated fields to the very summits. The poorest house has its plat of flowers, and cage or two of mocking-birds at the door. Most exquisite views open at each new curve of the climbing road; grand as those of Colorado, but with a picturesque entourage that gives a subtle foreign aroma which that wild
