Never did I see anything more dreary than these immense lengths
of desolate plains covered with aloes and other thorny and succulent
shrubs of fantastic aspect, which alone could live on the sandy and
waterless soil. This is a strange land, that can boast three separate
climates within its borders, and is able to show all the glories of the
tropics side by side with deserts of measureless expanse.
One night we camped in a rest house, of which there were many built
along the roads for the use of travellers, that was placed almost on
the top of the sierra or mountain range which surrounds the valley of
Tenoctitlan. Next morning we took the road again before dawn, for the
cold was so sharp at this great height that we, who had travelled from
the hot land, could sleep very little, and also Guatemoc desired if it
were possible to reach the city that night.
When we had gone a few hundred paces the path came to the crest of the
mountain range, and I halted suddenly in wonder and admiration. Below
me lay a vast bowl of land and water, of which, however, I could see
nothing, for the shadows of the night still filled it. But before me,
piercing the very clouds, towered the crests of two snow-clad mountains,
and on these the light of the unrisen sun played, already changing their
whiteness to the stain of blood. Popo, or the Hill that Smokes, is the
name of the one, and Ixtac, or the Sleeping Woman, that of the other,
and no grander sight was ever offered to the eyes of man than they
furnished in that hour before the dawn.
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