130 MEXICO, CENTEAL AMEEICA, WEST INDIES. 



communes, es|)ec(ially Chiroii-Q>iiaco, a village winch lies 20 miles further north, 

 and the jaroducts of which are the most highly esteemed. 



Jalapa is connected with the Mexican railway system by a branch which skirts 

 the north side of the Co/re de Perote, and then traverses the little town of that 

 name. Here is a magnificent and apparently impregnable citadel, which was 

 built at a great expense by the Spanish viceroy's for the purpose of guarding the 

 highway between Vera Cruz and Mexico. Merely to keep it in repair cost over a 

 million dollars yearly. But it may now be easily turned, and the citadel of Perote, 

 deprived of its strategic importance, has been transformed to a state prison. 



Coatepec, which lies in the midst of orchards and plantations some nine miles 

 south of Jalapa, is also a favourite resort of the coast people. But the little 

 centres of population following lower down in the direction of Vera Cruz already 

 lie within the dangerous zone which is yearly visited by yellow fever. Several of 

 these places have an historic name, having been the battleground of armies con- 

 testing the possession of the routes leading up to the plateau. Amongst them is 

 the Cerro Gordo, the passage of which was forced by the American troops in 1847. 

 Lower down is the Pneiite Nacioiml, formerly Pnente del Pey, a monumental bridge 

 which crosses the deep barranca of tlie Rio Antigua. South of Jalapa and Coatepec 

 several other towns occupy positions on the escarpments of the plateau analogous 

 to that of Jalapa itself. The roads which here creep up the slopes at heights 

 varying from 2,800 to 4,000 feet, are scarcely rivalled in the whole world for 

 their magnificent views and endless variety of scenery. On emerging from the 

 leafy avenues formed by the overhanging branches of conifers and other forest 

 growths, the traveller suddenly beholds snowy Orizaba and surrounding ranges, 

 with their spurs, terraces, wooded lava-fieldo, and the lower plains extending in 

 the hazy distance down to the curved margin of the blue Atlantic. The flanks of 

 the mountains are furrowed from base to summit by gloomy gorges several 

 hundred yards deep ; but the walls and taluses of these gorges, where the tracks 

 descend as into bottomless wells, are concealed by dense thickets, in which are 

 intermingled plants of the torrid and temperate zones. Along the banks of the 

 creek flowing on the bed of the barranca, the explorer treads his way as in a vast 

 conservatory beneath the pendent foliage of palms and tree ferns. 



Orizaba, which lies in the very heart of the mountains at the foot of Borrego, 

 has also a more continuous rainfall than Jalapa, and the exhalations rising from 

 the ground are more dangerous. It stands on the site of the ancient Ahiiilitzapan, 

 or " Glad Waters," over 4,000 feet above sea-level, on a terrace whose thriving 

 plantations are irrigated by copious streams of pure water. 



Nearly all the maritime trade of the state, and about half of all the exchanges of 

 the republic, are concentrated in the port of Vera Cruz. The village of Pueblo 

 Viejo (Old Town), over against Tampico, in Tamaulipas, is little more than a 

 detached suburb of that place. Farther south, Tuxpan, accessible only to small 

 craft, has a yearly trade of scarcely £200,000. For some time the w^orks have 

 been in progress which are intended to connect it with Tamjiico by a navigable 

 canal traversing the Tamahua and other coast lagoons. On the whole seaboard^ 



