::::::::3g: TWO BIRD -LOVERS IN MEXICO M-^-- 



Half an hour later, another wayside station comes 

 into view and the identical women crowd up as before, 

 with the same baskets and gourds of wares. This shows 

 how laborious and slow was our progress ; the Indian 

 women had run through the woods and now again 

 intercepted us, many miles from the last station, as the 

 track lies. The natives often send freight from place 

 to place, helping to load it on the car, then running 

 by some short cut, beating the train, unloading their 

 baggage, and thus saving all car-fare. 



At last we were so hig-h that the laro-e cultivated 

 fields looked like squares on a checker-board, and the 

 herds of grazing cattle became tiny black dots. The 

 most wonderful phenomenon of this ascent w^as the 

 change in vegetation. Oranges and bananas were re- 

 placed by plants of the temperate zone, and before the 

 highest 2^oint Avas reached, the vistas of the tropical 

 lowlands were framed in the needle-tracery of cold- 

 loving pines. Three hours' travel on this train will 

 teach one more of physical geography than three months 

 of study. At Esperanza we Avere more than a mile above 

 the level of the sea, and here the engines were changed, 

 the big fellows to rest a day and to-morrow to slide 

 gently back to Orizaba. 



As suddenly as we entered the mountains, so with- 

 out warning we left them and found ourselves rushing 

 along through clouds of dust across a plain, the begin- 

 ning of the great Mexican tableland, which extends 

 -4 26 ^ 



