dark belt of pines, the lighter foliage of the oaks, the
fields of barley, the waving maize, the thickets of yucca and acacia
trees, the palm forest, the shore, the sea itself with its azure waves--
all these at a single vision! From the summit of Orizava to the shores
of the Mexican Sea, I glance through every gradation of the thermal
line. I am looking, as it were, from the pole to the equator!

I am alone. My brain is giddy. My pulse vibrates irregularly, and my
heart beats with an audible distinctness. I am oppressed with a sense
of my own nothingness--an atom, almost invisible, upon the breast of the
mighty earth.

I gaze and listen. I see, but I hear not. Here is sight, but no sound.
Around me reigns an awful stillness--the sublime silence of the
Omnipotent, who alone is here.

Hark! the silence is broken! Was it the rumbling of thunder? No. It
was the crash of the falling avalanche. I tremble at its voice. It is
the voice of the Invisible--the whisper of a God!

I tremble and worship.

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Reader, could you thus stand upon the summit of Orizava, and look down
to the shores of the Mexican Gulf, you would have before you, as on a
map, the scene of our "adventures."

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Note 1. Anahuac is Mexico.

Note 2. Jornada is a day's journey.

Note 3. Pescador is a fisherman.

Note 4. Vomito is yellow-fever.

Note 5. Mexico is divided into three regions, known as the "hot"
(_caliente_), "temperate" (_templada_), and "cold" (_fria_).

Note 6. Carbonero is charcoal-burner.

Note 7. Arriero is mule-driver.

CHAPTER TWO.

AN ADVENTURE AMONG THE CREOLES OF NEW ORLEANS.

In the "fall" of 1846 I found myself in the city of New Orleans, filling
up one of those pauses that occur between the chapters of an eventful
life--doing nothing. I have said an _eventful_ life. In the retrospect
of ten years, I could not remember as many weeks spent in one place. I
had traversed the continent from north to south, and crossed it from sea
to sea. My foot had pressed the summits of the Andes, and climbed the
Cordilleras of the Sierra Madre. I had steamed it down the Mississippi,
and sculled it up the Orinoco. I had hunted buffaloes with the Pawnees
of the Platte, and ostriches upon the pampas of the Plata: to-day,
shivering in the hut of an Esquimaux--a month a