THE TIERRA TEMPLADA. 81 



limbs recover their elasticity. He breathes more freely , for his 

 senses are not now oppressed by the sultry heats and intoxicat- 

 ing perfumes of the lowlands. The aspect of nature, too, has 

 changed, and his eye no longer rests on the gay variety of 

 colours with which the landscape was painted there. The 

 vanilla, the indigo, the chocolate-tree disappear as he advances, 

 but the sugar-cane and the glossy-leaved banana still remain ; 

 and when he has ascended about four thousand feet, he sees, in 

 the unchanging green and the rich foliage of the liquidambar- 

 tree, that he has reached the height where clouds and mists settle 

 in their passage from the Mexican Grulf, and keep up a perpetual 

 moisture. 



He is now beyond the influence of the deadly vomito on 

 the confines of the tierra templada, or temperate region, 

 where evergreen oaks begin to remind him of the forests of 

 central Europe. The features of the scenery become grand, and 

 even terrible. His road sweeps along the base of mighty 

 mountains, once gleaming with volcanic fires, and still glisten- 

 ing in their mantles of snow, which serve as beacons to the 

 mariner for many a league at sea. All along he beholds traces 

 of their ancient combustion as his road passes over vast tracts 

 of lava, bristling in the fantastic forms into which the fiery 

 torrent has been thrown by obstacles in its career. Perhaps at 

 the same moment, as he casts his eyes down one of those un- 

 fathomable ravines or barrancas, which often, to a depth of 

 more than 1,200 feet, rend the mountain-side, he sees its 

 sheltered and sultry recesses glowing with the rich vegetation 

 of the tropics : as if these wonderful regions were anxious to 

 exhibit, at one glance, the boundless variety of their flora. 

 Cactuses, euphorbias, and dracsense, with a multitude of minor 

 plants, cling to the rocky walls ; while in the depth of the gorge 

 stand huge laurels, fig-trees, and bombacese, whose blossoms 

 exhale almost overpowering odours, and whose trunks are 

 covered with magnificent creepers, expanding their gay petals 

 in the torpid air. Still pressing upwards, he mounts into 

 regions favourable to other kinds of cultivation. He has traced 

 the yellow maize growing from the lowest level ; but he now 

 first sees fields of wheat and the other European cereals, brought 

 into the country by the Spanish conquerors, and with these, 

 plantations of the American agave, which, among other uses, 



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