two horses were rather thin, but otherwise in good
condition; and the horse-dealers, after no end of diplomacy on both
sides, knocked under to our threat of sending them back to Mexico in
charge of Antonio, and gave us within a pound or two of what they had
cost us. There, is a good deal of trading in horses done at Jalapa,
where travellers coming down from Mexico sell their beasts, which are
disposed of at great prices to other travellers coming up from the
coast. Between here and Vera Cruz, people prefer travelling in the
Diligence, or in some covered carriage, to exposing themselves to the
sun in the hot and pestilential region of the coast.

Jalapa is a pleasant city among the hills, in a country of forests,
green turf, and running streams. It is the very paradise of botanists;
and its products include a wonderful variety of trees and flowers, from
the apple- and pear-trees of England to the _mameis_ and _zapotes_ of
tropical America, and the brilliant orchids which are the ornament of
our hot-houses. The name of the town itself has a botanical celebrity,
for in the neighbouring forests grows the _Purga de Jalapa_, which we
have shortened into _jalap_.

A day's journey above it, lies the limit of eternal snow, upon the peak
of Orizaba; a day's journey below it is Vera Cruz, the city of the
yellow fever, surrounded by burning sands and poisonous exhalations, in
a district where, during the hot months now commencing, the thermometer
scarcely ever descends below 80 deg., day or night. Jalapa hardly knows
summer or winter, heat or cold. The upper current of hot air from the
Gulf of Mexico, highly charged with aqueous vapour, strikes the
mountains about this level, and forms the belt of clouds that we have
already crossed more than once during our journey. Jalapa is in this
cloudy zone, and the sky is seldom clear there. It is hardly hotter in
summer than in England, and not even hot enough for the mosquitoes,
which are not to be found here though they swarm in the plain below.
This warm damp climate changes but little in the course of the year.
There are no seasons, in our sense of the word, for spring lasts
through the year.

We walked out on the first afternoon of our arrival; and sat on stone
seats on a piece of green turf surrounded by trees, that reminded us
pleasantly of the village-greens of England. There we talked with the
children of an English acquaintance who had been settled for many years
in the town,