A Plantation In A Tropical Forest. 
BY W. A. CHILD, ESQ, PHB., M.A. 
This was illustrated by a large number of lantern slides from 
photographs taken by the speaker, and given before the 
Hamilton Association December 3rd, 1910. 
MEXICO. 
EXICO is a country of many aspects and many 
climates. The Mexico of which we generally 
think is the country around the City of Mexico, a 
wide, level, dry plain. At City of Mexico it is 7,000 feet 
above the sea, This great table land covers all the central 
portion of Mexico. It is cool on account of its great ele- 
vation ; it is dry most of the year, and in many places it is 
barren. It is a country of wide stretches of level grey- 
brown plains, with miles and miles of maguey or century 
plants, and lean, half-starved looking cattle, a country of 
little, squalid mud villages inhabited by dark fierce looking 
people and dejected donkeys. To me it is an altogether 
depressing, discouraging country. Surrounding this great 
plateau, as if it were the turned up edge of a platter, is a 
great mountain wall, running up to 10,000 feet and domi- 
nated here and there by splendid snow-capped peaks ; 
supreme among these are Popocatapet] Ixtaccihuatl and 
Orizaba. ‘These are among the most splendid mountains in 
the world, covered with a perpetual snow in a tropical 
land, rising 18,000 feet above the sea out of the wide plains 
of Mexico, they are of most indescribable character and 
beauty. 
Over the mountain the country slopes by successive 
terraces down to sea level. From the extreme cold of 
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