32 



Garden and Forest. 



[Number 466. 



its knolls once wooded are bare, and many another pic- 

 turesque feature which could have been saved fifty years ago 

 is lost forever. There is virgin soil still in the distant west, 

 and it would be a worthy ambition there to save some of 

 these picturesque places and preserve them for public 

 assembly grounds and parks for the people. 



The very phrase " pleasure-grounds " gives an unanswer- 

 able reason for setting apart such reservations. Of course, 

 people in the country do not need the sight of green fields 

 for the same reasons that people in the city do, but they 

 need refreshment and recreation even more. No life is 

 more monotonous than life on the farm, or in the factory 

 or mine, with its unending round of daily toil. The 

 farmer's family and the farmer himself come into contact 

 with nature, it is true, but it is rather in the way of con- 

 flict than of companionship. It is from nature that he 

 wrings a living, and nature is not always kind. Aggres- 

 sive forms of animal and vegetable life contest his right to 

 win his bread from the soil, and perversities of climate 

 often give aid and comfort to his foes. Life on the farm 

 is often hard enough to make men and women hope- 

 less. There ought to be more holiday time to brighten 

 life ; more frequent halts for rest in this sullen march to the 

 grave. Unless more cheer and refreshment is provided — 

 more natural and wholesome recreation — coming genera- 

 tions will bear witness to the depressing power of this 

 pitiless grind in dulled minds and dwarfed bodies. No 

 more delightful change from the hard and narrow lines of 

 rural life can be imagined than that afforded by some 

 alluring pleasure-ground to which country people could be 

 drawn to spend a day now and then in social mood and 

 holiday attire upon the grass and among the trees. A day 

 now and then, with all its hours undarkened by care, with 

 games and music and dancing and neighborly companion- 

 ship, would have a priceless recuperative value for the 

 rural population of the country. 



Notes of Mexican Travel. — XII. 



MY SUMMER IN THE VALLEY OF MEXICO. 1. 



IT was my happy fortune on my twelfth Mexican journey 

 to settle in convenient quarters in the capital city about 

 the end of May, 1896, for the purpose of studying and col- 

 lecting the plants of the surrounding regions, but especially 

 those of the Valley of Mexico. Two trained and faithful 

 assistants were with me, an American of two previous 

 journeys, to dry the plants with judgment and skill, and a 

 Mexican who had served me in Oaxaca, but was now 

 drawn from the police force of the city, to accompany me 

 in the field, to make way for me among his countrymen 

 and gather plants with judgment and untiring industry. 

 At first I contemplated trips to certain districts in contig- 

 uous states to which I had long been attracted ; but, as 

 the season advanced and the richness of the flora near at 

 hand manifested itself, I gave up thoughts of making such 

 digressions, and during all the season scarcely got fifty 

 miles away from Mexico City. It was the Cuernavaca 

 region alone, that region which had so charmed me the 

 previous autumn and had then repaid my exploration with 

 so many novelties, that could allure me away from the 

 wonderful Valley of Anahuac, the fair prize for which Tol- 

 tecand Aztec and Spaniard and Mexican have successive!}' 

 contended. 



Hence it is only of the country lying between Tula on 

 the north and Cuernavaca on the south, a tract lying on the 

 crest of the continent at an elevation of from 7,000 to 10,000 

 feet, with snow-capped peaks towering on either hand, that 

 I have now to write. In working this region I was in the 

 favorite field of many a botanist from the Old World, many 

 a veteran collector from the time of the courtly Spaniard, 

 Hernandez, down to the days of Bourgeau, who, from gath- 

 ering the flora of various lands, came finally as botanist to 

 the French Scientific Commission under the rule of Maxi- 

 milian. Here, high under the bright tropic sun, in an 

 atmosphere always fresh and invigorating, I went forth to 



my work in the fields each morning with gladness ; and 

 whatever the direction of my search I never failed to bring 

 in at night a burden of choice plants. For this work I 

 enjoyed large advantages over the earlier collectors. 

 Whereas, they at best could only reach the better collect- 

 ing grounds by long rides in the saddle, and must have 

 worked in much personal peril, I, thanks to the efficiency 

 of the present Government, could feel nearly as secure in 

 remotest canons as in my native fields ; and in modern 

 steam cars could gain the vicinity of nearly all points of 

 botanical interest. The officials of the Mexican Central 

 and the Cuernavaca railroads not only extended to me the 

 fullest courtesies of their lines, but manifested an intelligent 

 and friendly interest in my explorations. 



My location was near the station of these two railroads 

 in the Buena Vista quarter of the city. This is the West 

 End of Mexico, the modern and growing part of the city, 

 with open squares and broad clean streets and boulevards, 

 adorned with monuments and statues, sometimes bordered 

 with trees, full of white sunshine and flanked with elegant 

 mansions. All of this is in widest contrast with the East 

 End of the city, the ancient Mexico of the Viceroys, 

 crowded, dingy and dirty. A mile away in the Zocolo, or 

 central plaza, I could take cars of the District and the Val- 

 ley railroads, the former leading due south ten miles over 

 wet meadows to Tlalpam, planted at the foot of the hills 

 and close to the east edge of the lava-beds ; the latter bear- 

 ing into the south-west, first over soft meadows, then over 

 dry land and through the suburban villages of Tacubaya, 

 Mexcoac and San Angel to Tizapan, which is situated on 

 the west edge of the lava-beds toward the base of the Peak 

 of Ajusco. Near the northern edge of the lava-beds, be- 

 tween San Angel and Tlalpam, are the villages of Coyoa- 

 can and Churubusco. The shady lanes and hedgerows and 

 waste grounds about all these villages of the valley yield not 

 a few plants welcome to the collector. An hour's walk 

 beyond Tizapan brings one to the foot of the factory-town 

 of Contreras by the mouth of a deep canon which divides 

 the Sierra de Ajusco on the south side of the valley from 

 the Sierra de las Cruces on the west side. But Contreras is 

 best reached by train of the Cuernavaca Railroad ; and its 

 environs of flowery hillside and mountain top, of rocky 

 barranca and wet and shady canon, of mesa and lava-beds 

 offer to the naturalist or the pleasure-seeker, perhaps, the 

 choicest and most varied field of the valley. Scarcely more 

 than a mile beyond Contreras, and close by the station of 

 Esclava, at the foot of Ajusco, are beautiful groves of Pine, 

 Pinus leiphylla, with gentle glades dividing them ; and 

 behind these you can follow up a mountain canon into the 

 shade of great Firs, Abies religiosa. When the train has 

 carried you along up through woods that are a wild Dahlia- 

 garden — masses and masses of flaming blooms, three 

 species of Dahlias in twenty distinct colors — and has 

 brought you up to the heights of the Serrania de Ajusco, you 

 are again in groves of Pine, Pinus Montezumae now, which 

 are equally beautiful, and from which you can look out 

 over the wide panorama of the Valley of Mexico. 



For gaining the heights of the Sierra de las Cruces on the 

 west of the valley there is in earliest morning the train of 

 the Mexican National Railroad. After two hours mostly 

 spent in threading deep canons, we alight on the open and 

 grassy Plain of Salazar, some 10,000 feet above sea-level, 

 where the patriot Hidalgo, with his rude hordes, dealt the 

 Spaniards a first surprising blow in the war for indepen- 

 dence and then wandered away from his field of victory to 

 find, through treachery, imprisonment and death. Because 

 I had already worked these mountains during several years, 

 I only returned last season to glean a few last things such 

 as Weldenia Candida, whose lovely white flowers rise on 

 slender tubes from a star-like cluster of leaves. 



The train of the Mexican Central Railroad bears one 

 northward in the morning over flats often planted with 

 Corn, over hills interrupting these and down through the 

 Tula valley, some forty miles from the city. Here we may 

 aliarht in a region to which I rave considerable attention. 



