The Days of a Man X,^^^^ 



far. Those who feel themselves cured leave some 

 visible sign of their gratitude. At Guadalupe 

 Hidalgo a man saved from shipwreck had put up 

 an imposing stone monument — a boat with hull, 

 mast, and sail — as an offering to Our Lady of 

 Guadalupe; and other gifts equally strange, though 

 less bulky, abound in all the sacred shrines. 

 Striking But I might run on indefinitely about the mingled 



contrasts c^^rm and beggary of one place after another; 

 the high waterfall of Xico or the broad Niagara- 

 like Juanacatlan; the quaint Biblical architecture 

 of Zacatecas which seems to have sprung from the 

 dry rock; the surprises of Guanajuato with its 

 ancient crypt of upstanding mummies, skeletons of 

 generations of oldest inhabitants; and the sad 

 plight of fever-stricken Vera Cruz, where the cheap- 

 ness of human life was reflected in general reck- 

 lessness and dissipation. 

 Mount I might dwell on the grandeur of the Pico de 



Omaha Qtizaba, its 18,225 feet of brilliant green topped 

 with dazzling white rising in lines of perfect beauty 

 above the tropical city which bears its name, and 

 which nestles among forest trees hung with orchids 

 and Bromelias, — the whole mountain-mass a suc- 

 cession of zones of vegetation with hardly a parallel 

 Exotic in the world. I might write of Cordoba, smothered 

 in tropical vegetation and rioting in luscious fruits, 

 or of the wild delights of the valley of the Rio de 

 las Balsas where the forests swarm with far-away 

 birds — not only parrots, but black toucans also, 

 with bills much too large for their bodies, strange 

 woodland creatures one does not meet every day. 

 Or, finally I might recall Alpine Amecameca^ on 



^ Accented Ame'came'ca. 



n 642 3 



lands 



