ing woman," both of poetical Indian
nomenclature. These beautiful solitary uplifts rise far above the
canyons and forests at their bases: penetrate the clouds which
sometimes wreath them, terminating in a porcelain-gleaming summit of
perpetual snow. The mid-day sun flashes upon them, rendering them
visible from afar, and its declining rays paint them with that carmine
glow known to the Andine and Alpine traveller, which arrests his vision
as evening falls. So fell, indeed, the morning rays of the orb of day
upon the burnished golden breastplates of the image set on the sacred
pyramid of Teotihuacan: the sun-god, Tonatiuah, as in the shadowy
Toltec days he faced the flashing east.

Prehistoric fact and fable press hard upon us as we approach the famous
Valley of Mexico and its fine capital. This is the region where that
singular "stone age" flourished, of pyramid-building and stone-shaping
peoples. Here both geology and history have written their pages, as if
Nature and Fate had conspired together to mark epochs of time and space
in ancient temple, dead revolution, and slumbering volcano. And now
below us lies the City of Mexico. From the wooded uplands and
hill-summits--redolent of pine and exhilarating with the tonic
air--which form the rim of the valley, the panorama of the capital and
its environs lies open to the view. Plains crossed by white streaks of
far-off roads, intersecting the chequered fields of green _alfalfa_ and
yellow maize; _haciendas_ and villages embowered in luxuriant foliage;
the gleam of domes and towers, softened in the glamour of distance and
bathed by a reposeful atmosphere and mediaeval tints--such is Mexico,
this fair city of the West.

[Illustration: PINE-CLAD HILLS FORMING THE RIM OF THE VALLEY OF MEXICO,
8,000 FEET ELEVATION ABOVE SEA-LEVEL.]

The City of Mexico, like most centres of human habitation in whatever
part of the world, is most beautiful when seen from afar, and in
conjunction with Nature's environment. But the old Aztec city, the
dark, romantic seat of the viceroys, the theatre of revolutionary
struggle, and the modern centre of this important Mexican civilisation,
is a really handsome and attractive city. Indeed, the capitals of many
Spanish-American republics, and their civilisation and social _regime_,
are often in the nature of a revelation to the traveller from Europe or
the United States, who has generally pictured a far more primitive
State. With its handsome institut