284 A TRIP TO MEXICO. 



railway passes through the sandy regions that line the coast. 

 Then for a hundred miles, gradually rising, we pass through 

 regions of the most luxuriant tropical vegetation palm and 

 cocoa-nut trees, mangoes and mamey, guava and aguacate, orange 

 and coffee plantations, banana and pine-apple fields, fruits and 

 flowers in bewildering profusion and rankness of growth. Ar- 

 rived at Orizaba, one of the great fruit centers and delightful 

 stopping places of this route, we are 3,000 feet above the sea. 

 The snow-capped extinct volcano of the same name rises up on 

 our right to a height of over 17,000 feet. After leaving Orizaba 

 and skirting around the grand old peak that blocks our way, we 

 commence to ascend the valley of Maltrata. The ascent is here 

 so steep that the railway is laid in a zigzag course, continually 

 passing from one side to the other of the valley, which it follows 

 up to the very closing in of its mountainous walls. Then the 

 track doubles on itself, turns short about and comes back, climb- 

 ing the precipitous side of the very valley we have been ascend- 

 ing. There is here one of the most remarkable instances of 

 railway engineering in the world. To lay a railroad track, with a 

 uniform ascent of four feet in the hundred, against the steep 

 craggy sides of a mountain range, to tunnel its projecting cliffs, 

 to span its gorges with curving iron bridges, to go in and out of 

 all its defiles, winding and coiling in that slow course to the dizzy 

 height of 9,000 feet above the level of the sea, is one of those 

 astounding feats of skill and enterprise which only the Anglo- 

 Saxon race can accomplish. England built this road, commenced 

 in 1852, and finished in 1872. 



After climbing up the mountain side as we have described, 

 through a distance of ten miles or more, we can still see from 

 the car window, 3,000 feet beneath us, the serpentine track of 

 the road up the valley over which we came two hours before. 

 But in mounting thus ever upward we have passed out of the 

 tropical climate and vegetation, into the regions of cloud and 

 wind, of the pine and the birch tree. We are in another world. 

 They call it " tierra f ria "the cold land. 



The grade of this road up the mountain, four per cent, is the 

 steepest of any other simple traction road, except a short one in 



