QUERETARO AND BEYOND. 1 7 



the old and flourishing town of San Juan del Rio, celebrated for the beauty of its 

 fields and gardens; even Humboldt mentioning them so long ago as 1S03. Nu- 

 merous churches and useless convents are found here ; but there is little to claim 

 attention. Bevond, are various small towns, such as Nopala ; and at Tula, but 

 eighty kilometres, or fifty miles, distant from Mexico, we enter a town older, proba- 

 bly, than any other on the line. 



There are fair hotels here, as also at the various cities and towns now pierced 

 by the railroad, with prices at about the average in the United States, with a trifle 

 rougher style of accommodations. The charm of Tula consists chiefly in its anti- 

 quity. Not only has it an old cathedral — one of the very first built after the 

 Conquest — and a massive bridge nearly as old; but it is half encircled by hills 

 crowned with remains of very ancient structures. In the plaza are shown carved 

 pillars ; and tradition is very firm in the statement that Tula was the site of a 

 Toltec city more than a thousand years ago. Lying on the northern verge of the 

 valley of Mexico, on the banks of the River Tula, or Montezuma, the situation 

 of the town is pretty, although the surrounding soil and vegetation are not rich. 

 In fact, we have left behind us the fertile soil and the exuberant vegetation of 

 the central Baxio, and are now in a different land, though on the same plateau. 

 Cactus, agave, and upland palm adorn vast plains, uncultivated and lava-strewn; 

 and in the fifty intervening miles to Mexico little of cultivation is seen. 



We pass El Salto at sixty-two kilometres from the capital, and Huehuetoca at 

 forty-seven, and enter that great cut through the mountain-ridge that hems in the 

 valley of Mexico, the Tajo of Nochistongo, dug to drain the upper lakes. 



The aspect of the valley of Mexico, as entered from any point of compass, 

 is beautiful in a general way ; but a nearer view will not impress one so favorably. 

 The soil is sterile, denuded of attractive vegetation, and the surface worn into 

 gullies, ravines, and barrancas, by repeated rains. Huehuetoca is a dismal, dreary, 

 uninteresting place ; and Cuautitlan, but twenty-seven kilometres from the capital, 

 though populous, has nothing at all to attract a stranger. An exception may be 

 made, however, in favor of its Sunday bull-fights, to which the roads run loaded 

 trains, at great profit. In fact, no one would care to linger in the northern portion 

 of the valley, between Tula and Mexico, except it were for the inspection of places 

 made fascinating by historic events of world-wide renown. Zumpango is one of 

 these points. It was the seat of a powerful Chichimec chief, before the coming 

 of the Aztecs ; and the lake here is the one that has caused most disaster from 

 inundation to the city of Mexico. It lies eastward from the railroad, its waters 

 sparkling in the clear sunlight of this great elevation above the sea. 



If the region we have now entered be not so fruitful in returns to the agricul- 

 turist, it is a glorious field for the seeker after the picturesque and for the student 

 of history. Though stripped of the forests that once gave it shade and fertility, 

 yet the bare hills have a beauty peculiarly their own; and the almost numberless 

 villages and haciendas, with white walls gleaming amongst fruit and flowering trees 

 of garden and field, render the scene one long to be remembered. We have now 

 come in sight of the great volcanoes, Popocatapetl and Iztaccihuatl, that keep 

 watch and ward over the historic city of the Aztecs ; and soon the intervening 

 space is passed, and the long journey from El Paso, of 1,225 niil^s, is ended. 



