LETTER IV.
XALAPA AND PEROTE.
When the Neapolitans speak to you of their beautiful city, they call it, "a piece of heaven fallen to earth;[1] and tell you to "see Naples and die!"
It is only because so few travellers extend their journey to Xalapa and describe its scenery, that it has not received something of the same extravagant eulogium. I regret exceedingly that my stay was so limited as not to allow an opportunity of beholding the beautiful views around the city, under the influence of a serene sky and brilliant sun.
The town has about ten thousand inhabitants, and is, in every respect, the reverse of Vera Cruz; high, healthy, and built on almost precipitous streets, winding, with curious crookedness, up the steep hill-sides.
This perching and bird-like architecture makes a city picturesque—although its highways may be toilsome to those who are not always in search of the romantic.
The houses of Xalapa are not so lofty as those of Vera Cruz, and their exteriors are much plainer; but the inside of the dwellings, I am told, is furnished and decorated in the most tasteful manner. The hotel in which we lodged was an evidence of this; its walls and ceilings were papered and painted in a style of splendor rarely seen out of Paris.
Before breakfast we strolled to the Convent of St. Francisco, an immense pile of buildings of massive masonry, and apparently bomb-proof. The church is exceedingly plain, but there is a neat and tasteful garden with a lofty wall. This convent also possesses a court-yard of about one hundred feet square, with an arcade of two stories, the upper part of which contains a series of spacious cells; but the whole edifice has a ruined appearance, having once been converted into a cavalry barrack, where the bugle as often sounded the morning call as the bell summoned to matins.
From the top of this conventual edifice there is a fine view of Xalapa and its vicinity. We could see the town straggling up its steep and irregular streets; but much of the adjacent scenery, and especially those two grand objects in the descriptions of all travellers, the Peak of Orizaba and the Coffre De Perote, were entirely obscured by a cloud of mist which hung around the valley in a silvery ring, inclosing the ver-
- ↑ "Un pedazo de cielo caido en tierra.
