]

The mountain-slopes which descend from the Sierra Madre eastward toward
the sea are furrowed by _barrancas_--deep ravines with perpendicular
sides, and with streams flowing at the bottom. But here all these
_barrancas_ run almost due east and west, so that our journey from Vera
Cruz to Mexico was made, as far as I can recollect, without crossing
one. Now, the case was quite different. We had to go from the Potrero
to the city of Jalapa, about fifty miles on the map, nearly northward,
and to get over these fifty miles cost us two days and a half of hard
riding.

By the road it cannot be much less than eighty miles; but people used
to tell us that, during the American war, an Indian went from Orizaba
to Jalapa with despatches within the twenty-four hours, probably by
mountain-paths which made it a little shorter. He came quite easily
into Jalapa at the same shuffling trot which he had kept up almost
without intermission for the whole distance. This is the Indian's
regular pace when he is on a journey, and I believe that the Red
Indians of the north have a similar gait.

We used sometimes to see a village or a house three or four miles off,
and count upon reaching it in half an hour. But a few steps further on
there would be a barranca, invisible till we came close to it, perhaps
not more than a few hundred feet wide, so that it was easy to talk to
people on the other bank. But the bottom of the chasm might be five
hundred or a thousand feet below us; and the only way to cross was to
ride along the bank, often for miles, until we reached a place where it
had been possible to make a steep bridle-path zigzagging down to the
stream below, and up again on the other side. It is only here and there
that even such paths can be made, for the walls of rock are generally
too steep even for any vegetation, except grass and climbing plants in
the crevices. Our half-hour's ride, as we supposed it would be, would
often extend to two or three hours, for on these slopes two or three
barrancas--large and small---have sometimes to be crossed within as
many miles.

If our journey had been even slower and more difficult, we should not
have regretted it; the country through which we were riding was so
beautiful. There were but few inhabitants, and the landscape was much
as nature had left it. The great volcano of Orizaba came into view now
and then with its snowy cone,[23] mountain-streams came rushing along
the ravines, and the forest