The Rifle Rangers | Page 6

to the mountain foot; and upon this roam countless
herds, tended by mounted "vaqueros" (herdsmen).
I pass another ridge, and another valid stretches before me. Again a
change! A desert of sand, over the surface of which move tall dun
columns of swirling 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.
----
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.
----
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."
----
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