MEXICO 
AS IT WAS AND AS IT IS 
LETTER I. 
VOYAGE TO VERA CKUZ. 
I LEFT New-York on the 27th of October', 1841, with a fair wind, and 
on the twelfth day after, at sunrise, saw the lofty peak of Orizaba^ towering 
above the distant line of the western horizon. 
I have rarely beheld a more beautiful sight than this was. The mar- 
itime Alps, as seen from the Gulf of Lyons, present a spectacle of great 
majesty and beauty. But this grand and solitar)' peak, lifting its head 
more than 17,000 feet above the ocean, the sentinel, as it were, of a land 
toward which you may still sail for days before you arrive, has struck 
every traveller with wonder since the daj'^s when Cortez first hailed it on 
his adventurous voyage for the conquest of Mexico. 
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Our vessel has been quite full ^f passengers in cabin and steerage ; 
rnjerchants, going out to gather in their fortunes in this country ; manu- 
facturers, keen and thrifty, with their machinery, ready to take advantage 
of the ample profits to be reaped in the " cotton line" from the protection 
of national industry in Mexico; a German student, fresh from his alma 
mater, adventuring for fortune in Vera Cruz, in spite of all competition 
and the vomito; a gentle maiden, sighing for somebody at the end of the 
voyage; a staunch Scotch operative, with a wife and two children, the 
latter of whom made up in their little private volunteer squalls for the 
sea squalls we missed ' and last of all, a worthy old Italian fighter, who 
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