10 MEXICAN HISTORY AND ARCHAEOLOGY. 



everlasting snow of Popocateptl. All these delightful climates produce the fruits 

 and flowers of the tropics on the same .parallel of latitude that crosses continual 

 frost, while, over all, a never ending spring bends its cloudless arch. Nor are 

 these the only allurements of this wonderful land, for nature, as if unsatisfied with 

 pampering the tastes of man by crowding the surface of the earth with everything 

 that might please his appetite or delight his eye, has veined its sterile mountains 

 with precious ores in exhaustless quantity. 



It is not surprising that hardy races from the northern hive, where vigor is gained 

 from toil and where toil wrests existence from an ungenerous soil, abandoned their 

 savage habits and were subdued into a masculine civilization by a country and 

 climate like these. It was a tropical Switzerland. Such a people, by migration, 

 may lose nothing of their energy except its barbarism, and gain nothing from the 

 softer skies but their genial blandness. 



