Apennine and Alp--the novelist turns the skulking thief of Italy into a
picturesque bandit, or, Don Quixote-like, betaking himself into the
misty middle age, entertains the romantic miss and milliner's apprentice
with stories of raven steeds, of plumed and impossible heroes. All--
painter, poet, tourist, and novelist--in search of the bright and
beautiful, the poetic and the picturesque--turn their backs upon this
lovely land.

Shall we? No! Westward, like the Genoese, we boldly venture--over the
dark wild waves of the rolling Atlantic; through among the sunny islands
of Ind--westward to the land of Anahuac. Let us debark upon its shores;
let us pierce the secret depths of its forests; let us climb its mighty
mountains, and traverse its table-plains.

Go with us, tourist! Fear not. You shall look upon scenes grand and
gloomy, bright and beautiful. Poet! you shall find themes for poesy
worthy its loftiest strains. Painter! for you there are pictures fresh
from the hand of God. Writer! there are stories still untold by the
author-artist--legends of love and hate, of gratitude and revenge, of
falsehood and devotion, of noble virtue and ignoble crime--legends
redolent of romance, rich in reality.

Thither we steer, over the dark wild waves of the rolling Atlantic;
through the summer islands of the Western Ind; onward--onward to the
shores of Anahuac!

Varied is the aspect of that picture-land, abounding in scenes that
change like the tints of the opal. Varied is the surface which these
pictures adorn. Valleys that open deep into the earth; mountains that
lead the eye far up into heaven; plains that stretch to the horizon's
verge, until the rim of the blue canopy seems to rest upon their
limitless level; "rolling" landscapes, whose softly-turned ridges remind
one of the wavy billows of the ocean.

Alas! word-painting can give but a faint idea of these scenes. The pen
can but feebly portray the grand and sublime effect produced upon the
mind of him who gazes down into the deep valleys, or glances upward to
the mighty mountains of Mexico.

Though feeble be the effort, I shall attempt a series of sketches from
memory. They are the panoramic views that present themselves during a
single "Jornada."

I stand upon the shores of the Mexican Gulf. The waves lip gently up to
my feet upon a beach of silvery sand. The water is pure and
translucent, of azure blue, here and there crested with the pearly froth
of c