re and surprise from point to point of the immense
landscape, vainly endeavouring to comprehend in one frame the
wonderfully-contrasted materials of the picture before him.

The flanks of these mountain ridges are thickly clothed with lofty oak and
pine, while the dwarf oak and the mimosa cover the shoulders; and their
rocky summits, bare of all vegetable life, are composed of granite and
porphyry. Terrific craters yawn on every side of these sombre dark-brown
masses, which appear to be still teeming with those tremendous
revolutions, that have given to this country its remarkable configuration.
Luxuriant crops of wheat and maize cover the mountain slopes; the lower
levels delight the eye with the endless variety and brilliant colours of
their exotic plants; while, still lower, the tough agave darts forth its
sharp and giant leaves, like so many sword-blades, and the plains are
intersected by vast barrancas,[31] exhibiting that wonderful opulence of
tropical fertility, which is ever at work in their deep and shady hollows.
From these ascend the roar of rushing streams, invisible to the eye, but
mighty in their influence; every slope they wash yielding a prodigality of
vegetable ornament, which the most glowing fancy would find it difficult
to paint. The flowering shrubs are linked together and covered by
numberless creepers, studded with brilliant blossoms, forming continuous
garlands of flowers, which climb on the roots to the crown, and conceal
thousands of conzontlis, cardinal birds, and madrugadores, within their
shady recesses.

It was a bright and sunny afternoon. The snowy regions of the mighty
Orizava,[32] and of the mightier Popocatepetl, hitherto resplendent as
burnished silver, now began to exhibit flickering tints of rose-colour,
which, deepening on their eastern sides into golden-yellow and bronze,
reflected every moment some fresh variety of hue. The shadows of Mount
Malinche and his brethren began to stretch over towards Tlascala. Deep
silence prevailed throughout the entire district, broken only by the
scream of the ring eagle, or the hollow howl of the coyote.[33]

On one of the mountain ridges stretching eastward from San Martin, and
over which Cortes first penetrated into the valley of Tenochtitlan, two
men had stationed themselves, with their backs to a mass of porphyry
rock, that rose, like a fragment of some mighty castle, above a yawning
barranca of prodigious depth. The lank, straight hair, and