IIO Ascent of the Volcano of Popocatepetl. (February, 
viously made the ascent, kindly accompanied us to the snow line 
as guide, interpreter and friend. We laid in supplies of boiled 
chicken, other meats, bread and tea for our night at the ranch and 
the noon lunch on the summit. By the kindness of Messrs. D. S. 
Spaulding & Co., I obtained a letter from General Gaspar Sanchez 
Ochoa, the proprietor of the mountain, to one of his employés, 
Sr. D. Mariano Mendizabal, at Amecameca, who was ordered to 
send his son Rafael to guide us to the summit. The day pre- 
vious to leaving the City of Mexico I telegraphed to Senior Nor- 
riega, a grocer at Amecameca, for horses.and guides for a party of 
four. That evening the sun sat clear on Popocatepetl, and the 
weather promised to be clear and fine on the morrow. 
On the morning of March togth, after an early breakfast, we 
drove to the' railroad station at San Lazaro, leaving it at 8 A. M. 
The sky was a little overcast, but soon the sun came out clear 
and hot. We soon crossed the edge of Lake Tescuco over a 
causeway, along the canals traversed by Indian dugouts, over the 
shallow reedy lake, in which were men and boys naked or stripped 
to the knees, wading through the water, fishing in its shallow 
depths with nets for shiners or axolotls. The track then leaves 
the lake and its flaggy, reedy shores and passes over a broad dry 
plain, the ancient bottom of Tescuco, the western portions of 
which are said, by Humboldt, to have been covered with water in 
1521. Here were to be seen the mounds of that busy ant, Po- 
gonomyrmex occidentalis, so familiar a sight from Montana to 
New Mexico and from Kansas to Reno, Nevada. 
At the first station of Equipajes we get a fine view of Popo- 
catepetl and Iztacihuatl, The railroad then skirts the bor- 
ders of Lake Chalco, and we see upon our right many of the 
famous floating islands covered with green flags and reeds, which 
had survived since the time of Cortez. At the station of Ayotla 
the Indians crowd about the train offering fishes wrapped in the 
leaves of the pond lily, and here we bought half a dozen large 
axolotls fora centapiece. We then passed within sight of Chalco, 
the oldest Indian town of the valley of Anahuac. Amecameca, 
the town where we take our guides and horses, is about forty 
miles by rail from Mexico and 1274 toises or 8223 feet above the 
sea. Itis the highest town in Mexico; its elevation renders — 
1 The two others were Professor J. W. P. Jenks, of Brown University, and Hon. 
‘Titus Sheard. 
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