The Rifle Rangers | Page 6

dust, like the gigantic phantoms of some spirit-world. I look into another valle, and behold shining waters-- lakes like inland seas--with sedgy shores and surrounded by green savannas, and vast swamps covered with reeds and "tulares" (bulrush).
Still another plain, black with lava and the scoriae of extinct volcanoes--black, treeless, and herbless--with not an atom of organic matter upon its desolate surface.
Such are the features of the plateau-land--varied, and vast, and full of wild interest.
I leave it and climb higher--nearer to the sky--up the steep sides of the Cordilleras--up to the tierra fria.
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I stand ten thousand feet above the level of the ocean. I am under the deep shadows of a forest. Huge trunks grow around me, hindering a distant view. Where am I? Not in the tropic, surely, for these trees are of a northern sylva. I recognise the gnarled limbs and lobed leaves of the oak, the silvery branches of the mountain-ash, the cones and needles of the pine. The wind, as it swirls among the dead leaves, causes me to shiver; and high up among the twigs there is the music of winter in its moaning. Yet I am in the torrid zone; and the same sun that now glances coldly through the boughs of the oak, but a few hours before scorched me as it glistened from the fronds of the palm-tree.
The forest opens, and I behold hills under culture--fields of hemp and flax, and the hardy cereals of the frigid zone. The rancho of the husbandman is a log cabin, with shingled roof and long projecting eaves, unlike the dwellings either of the great valus or the tierras calientes. I pass the smoking pits of the "carbonero", and I meet the "arriero" with his "atajo" of mules heavily laden with ice of the glaciers. They are passing with their cargoes, to cool the wine-cups in the great cities of the plains.
Upward and upward! The oak is left behind, and the pine grows stunted and dwarfish. The wind blows colder and colder. A wintry aspect is around me.
Upward still. The pine disappears. No vegetable form is seen save the mosses and lichens that cling to the rocks, as within the Arctic Circle. I am on the selvage of the snow--the eternal snow. I walk upon glaciers, and through their translucent mass I behold the lichens growing beneath.
The scene is bleak and desolate, and I am chilled to the marrow of my bones.
Excelsior! excelsior! The highest point is not yet reached. Through drifts of snow and over fields of ice, up steep ledges, along the slippery escarpment that overhangs the giddy abysm, with wearied knees, and panting breath, and frozen fingers, onward and upward I go. Ha! I have won the goal. I am on the summit!
I stand on the "cumbre" of Orizava--the mountain of the "burning star"-- more than three miles above the ocean level. My face is turned to the east, and I look downward. The snow, the cincture of lichens and naked rocks, the dark belt of pines, the lighter foliage of the oaks, the fields of barley, the waving maize, the thickets of yucca and acacia trees, the palm forest, the shore, the sea itself with its azure waves-- all these at a single vision! From the summit of Orizava to the shores of the Mexican Sea, I glance through every gradation of the thermal line. I am looking, as it were, from the pole to the equator!
I am alone. My brain is giddy. My pulse vibrates irregularly, and my heart beats with an audible distinctness. I am oppressed with a sense of my own nothingness--an atom, almost invisible, upon the breast of the mighty earth.
I gaze and listen. I see, but I hear not. Here is sight, but no sound. Around me reigns an awful stillness--the sublime silence of the Omnipotent, who alone is here.
Hark! the silence is broken! Was it the rumbling of thunder? No. It was the crash of the falling avalanche. I tremble at its voice. It is the voice of the Invisible--the whisper of a God!
I tremble and worship.
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Reader, could you thus stand upon the summit of Orizava, and look down to the shores of the Mexican Gulf, you would have before you, as on a map, the scene of our "adventures."
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Note 1. Anahuac is Mexico.
Note 2. Jornada is a day's journey.
Note 3. Pescador is a fisherman.
Note 4. Vomito is yellow-fever.
Note 5. Mexico is divided into three regions, known as the "hot" (caliente), "temperate" (templada), and "cold" (fria).
Note 6. Carbonero is charcoal-burner.
Note 7. Arriero is mule-driver.
CHAPTER TWO.
AN ADVENTURE AMONG THE CREOLES OF NEW ORLEANS.
In the "fall" of 1846 I found myself in the city of New Orleans, filling up one of those pauses that occur between the chapters of an eventful life--doing nothing. I have said an eventful life.