Railway from Vera Cruz to the capital. This work, having been
much aided by the Maximilian _regime_, was completed under President
Lerdo, and inaugurated on January 1, 1873. The line is controlled by an
English corporation, and the great engineering difficulties which were
overcome, and the solidity of its construction, are such as are
scarcely surpassed by any railway in the world, conditions which
reflect credit upon its British constructors. The line is almost unique
from a scenic point of view, ascending, as it does, from the Gulf
Coast, among the stupendous mountain fastnesses of the Sierra Madre, to
gain the great elevation of the plateau and the Valley of Mexico. The
tropical regions passed through, and the rapid changes of climate
encountered, as the train ascends, must be experienced to be
understood, but the general character of the regions traversed has been
fully set forth in these pages. One of the most remarkable places, from
an engineering and scenic point of view, is the Maltrata summit, and
only in a few places in the world--on the transandine or transalpine
railways, or the Denver line--is it equalled. From the gained altitude
the passenger looks down upon the town, spread like a chess-board,
thousands of feet below, as the train plunges around dizzy _barrancas_,
over iron bridges spanning profound canyons, or along the curving
road-bed cut in the solid rock of the mountain side. The names of many
of the points passed _en route_ bring back memories of the Conquest,
and of those Homeric men who passed that way nearly four centuries ago,
as well as of the Toltec and Aztec periods. From tide-water at Vera
Cruz, the line crosses the coastal plain and plunges into a tropical
forest, whence it climbs to 2,713 feet at Cordova, 4,028 feet at
Orizaba, amid a delightful climate and surroundings, 5,151 feet at
Maltrata, 8,000 feet at Esperanza, and reaches its highest point at
Acocotla, near San Marcos, an elevation of 8,310 feet above sea-level.
This, of course, is not high in comparison with the transandine Oroya
railway of Peru,[44] which--the highest in the world--reaches 15,666
feet. The Vera Cruz line descends from the summit of the Sierra Madre
to the Valley and City of Mexico, past the plains of Otumba and San
Juan Teotihuacan, reaching the capital at an elevation of 7,348 feet
above sea-level. The length of the line from Vera Cruz to the City of
Mexico is 264 miles, and with its branches to Puebla and Pac