::::::::3e TWO BIRD -LOVERS IN MEXICO ls::::n:: 



Half an hour later, another wayside station comes 

 into view and the identical women crowd up as before, 

 with the same baskets and gourds of wares. This shows 

 how laborious and slow was our progress ; the Indian 

 women had run throuoh the woods and now asrain 

 intercepted us, many miles from the last station, as the 

 track lies. The natives often send freight from place 

 to place, helping to load it on the car, then running 

 by some short cut, beating the train, unloading their 

 baairaoe, and thus savino- all car-fare. 



At last we were so hioh that the lar<>e cultivated 

 fields looked like squares on a checker-board, and the 

 lierds of grazing cattle became tiny black dots. The 

 most wonderful phenomenon of this ascent was the 

 chansre in vegetation. Oranges and bananas were re- 

 placed by plants of the temperate zone, and before the 

 higliest ])()int was reached, the vistas of the tropical 

 lowlands were framed in the needle-tracery of cold- 

 loving pines. Three hours' travel on this train will 

 teach one more of physical geography than three months 

 of study. At Esperanza we were more than a mile above 

 the level of the sea, and here the engines were changed, 

 the big fellows to rest a day and to-morrow to slide 

 gently back to Orizaba. 



As suddenly as we entered the mountains, so with- 

 out warning we left them and found ourselves rushing 

 along through clouds of dust across a plain, the begin- 

 nin«- of the ""leat Mexican tableland, which extends 



•«4 '26 ^. 



