THE TABLE LAND. 



79 



The second day's ride of seven leagues, over a hilly 

 country, increasing in interest at every step, brought us 

 over the great dike of San Cristobal, to a village within 

 three leagues of Mexico : and, at last, on the morning of 

 the 18th, passing by the celebrated collegiate church of 

 Guadaloupe, we quitted terra firma by the causeway 

 from the north and half an hour afterward entered the 

 gate of Mexico. 



I w r ould not here anticipate many observations upon 

 the features and phenomena of the district now traversed, 

 which may find a more suitable place in a future letter, 

 but I cannot avoid observing, how, from the very mo- 

 ment of his descent from the mountains, the unusual 

 scenes which open themselves before the traveller, pre- 

 pare him as it were for that extraordinary and fascina- 

 ting picture, which is presented to him on attaining the 

 object of his toils. 



The arid, glazed, and silent surface of those intermin- 

 able levels, over which the whirling column of sand is 

 seen stalking with its stately motion in the midst of a hot 

 and stagnant atmosphere ; and upon whose surface he 

 continually sees painted the magic and illusory pictures of 

 the mirage 3 with their transparent waters and reflected 

 scenes : the huge dark piles of distant mountains, range 

 behind range — the strange character of the colouring of 

 the landscape far and near — the isolated volcanic cones 

 springing up suddenly from the dead flats, and the lofty 

 peaks of the great volcanoes far in the distance, gleaming 

 in the blue sky with their snowy summits ; the numerous 

 churches, each with its dome and towers, mocking the 

 deserted waste around, and the wretched groups of mud 

 cottages in its vicinity, by its stately architecture ; all 

 this — seen through an atmosphere of such transcendent 

 purity, that, vast as the expanded landscape seems, no 

 just idea of its immensity can be formed from the calcu- 

 lations of the eye — imbodies forth, not perhaps the pic- 

 turesque, nor perhaps the beautiful, but most assuredly 

 the sublime. 



And when approaching the main valley, the villages 



