1893 
Mount 
Orizaba 
foot of the mountain down to Chalchicomula. In the trees and bushes 
(oaks and alders) along the roadside here were great numbers of birds 
evidently drawn here by the water in the open flume. A drink from 
the sparkling, stream and we went on, winding up among the starting wheat 
fields and soon reached the border of the pine timbers at about 9000 ft. 
Up to this point the j Geoaws and bipodomys of the plains follow the 
cultivator but stop abruptly with the border of the unbroken forest. 
At first, after the end of the fields, the road led up a broad 
gentle slope covered with slender pines forming an open forest. The 
ground was covered with fallen needles, but of grass and other small 
vegetables there was almost none, lost of the lower branches of the 
pines were dead and the almost total absence of birds or other signs 
of animal life gave the wood a sad loneliness. Here and there a Junco 
flitted from the ground up into a tree or one sang its short unmusical 
ditty from a branch overhead. 1 . ' 
Having passed the gradual slope, we came to the much more abrupt 
rise of the main base. There, dark firs and alders with curiously 
swollen, thick bark. Among the firs a plentiful growth of saccaton 
grass is found and here were scattered half naked Indians digging it 
up to obtain its stiff roots which are sold to make short brushes. 
Here also we found various potato fields in cleared places among 
the firs and alders. The latter trees often attain 3 ft. in diameter, 
and 60 or 60 feet in height. 
One of my guides was joined here by a couple of his sons who led 
us to a small spring in a fir shaded canon where a couple of tree trunks 
had been dug out for troughs for the accommodation of the cattle. By 
this a fire was quickly built and we had a lunch while the pigmy nut¬ 
hatches hammered away overhead on the dead branches of the firs and made 
a noise quite out of proportion to their bulk. 
- 168 
