f Cortes--Acapulco--Romantic old _haciendas_--Tropic sunset--
Unexplored Guerrero--Perils and pleasures of the trail--Sunset in the
Pacific Ocean.

Mexico, that southern land lying stretched between the Atlantic and
Pacific Oceans, upon the tapering base of North America, is a country
whose name is fraught with colour and meaning. The romance of its
history envelops it in an atmosphere of adventure whose charm even the
prosaic years of the twentieth century have not entirely dispelled, and
the magnetism of the hidden wealth of its soil still invests it with
some of the attraction it held for the old Conquistadores. It was in
the memorable age of ocean chivalry when this land was first won for
Western civilisation: that age when men put forth into a sunset-land of
Conquest, whose every shore and mountain-pass concealed some El Dorado
of their dreams. The Mexico of to-day is not less interesting, for its
vast territory holds a wealth of historic lore and a profusion of
natural riches. Beneath the Mexican sky, blue and serene, stretch great
tablelands, tropic forests, scorching deserts, and fruitful valleys,
crowned by the mineral-girt mountain ranges of the Sierra Madres; and
among them lie the strange pyramids of the bygone Aztecs, and the rich
silver mines where men of all races have enriched themselves. Mexico is
part of that great Land of Opportunity which the Spanish-American world
has retained for this century.

There are two main travelled ways into Mexico. The first lies across
the stormy waters of the Mexican Gulf to the yellow strand of Vera
Cruz, beyond which the great "star-mountain" of the Aztecs,
Citlaltepetl,[1] rears its gleaming snow-cap in mid-heavens, above the
clouds. It was here that Cortes landed, four centuries ago, and it is
the route followed by the tide of European travellers to-day.
Otherwise, the way lies across the Great Plateau, among the arid plains
of the north, where, between the sparsely-scattered cities and
plantations of civilised man, the fringe of Indian life is spread upon
the desert, and the shadowy forms of the _coyote_ and the cactus blend
into the characteristic landscape. Both ways are replete with interest,
but that of Vera Cruz is the more varied and characteristic. Here
stands Ulua, the promontory-fortress, where more than one of Mexico's
short-lived rulers languished and died of yellow fever, and which was
the last stronghold of Spain. Beyond it arise the white buildings