78 TRAVEL, ADVENTURE, AND SPORT. 



the valley and over the soft fetid swamp. That 

 valley of Oaxaca has just as much right to be called 

 a valley as our Alleghanies would have to be called 

 bottoms. In the States we should call it a chain of 

 mountains. Out of it rise at every step hills a good 

 two thousand feet above the level of the valley, and 

 four or five thousand above that of the sea ; but these 

 are lost sight of, and become flat ground by the force 

 of comparison that is, when compared with the 

 gigantic mountains that surround the valley on all 

 sides like a frame. And what a splendid frame they 

 do compose, those colossal mountains, in their rich 

 variety of form and colouring ! here shining out like 

 molten gold, there changing to a dark bronze ; covered 

 lower down with various shades of green, and with 

 the crimson and purple, and violet and bright yellow, 

 and azure and dazzling white, of the millions of pau- 

 linias and convolvuluses and other flowering plants, 

 from amongst which rise the stately palm-trees, full 

 a hundred feet high, their majestic green turbans 

 towering like sultans' heads above the luxuriance of 

 the surrounding flower and vegetable world. Then 

 the mahogany-trees, the chicozapotes, and again in 

 the barrancas the candelabra-like cactuses, and higher 

 up the knotted and majestic live oak. An incessant 

 change of plants, trees, and climate. We had been 

 five hours in the saddle, and had already changed our 

 climate three times ; passed from the temperate zone, 

 the tierra templada, into the torrid heat of the tierra 



