sts, are romantic old _haciendas_ and
villages hidden away in the folds of the landscape, such as are a
delight to the traveller and the lover of the picturesque. The "happy
valley" of Cuernavaca is reached by railway from the capital, but
beyond this the road to the seaboard is still that ancient trail which
Cortes used, which descends to Acapulco, for the railway builders have
not yet completed their works to the Pacific waters.

Away from the main route of travel lie sequestered old sugar estates,
and villages of romantic and picturesque charm, yet untouched by
speculator or capitalist. Antique piles of stone buildings are there,
redolent of that peculiar poetry of the pastoral life of Mexico in the
tropics. The old Spaniards built well; their solid masonry defies the
centuries; and their most prosaic structures were invested with an
architectural charm which the rapid money-seeker of to-day cares little
for, in his corrugated iron and temporary materialism. Near to the
arches, columns, and turrets of the old _haciendas_ the garden lies,
replete with strange fruits and flowers. The gleam of oranges and limes
comes from the tangled groves; grapes and pomegranates vie with each
other in unattended profusion. The iguana sports among the old stone
walls of the great garden, and humming-birds and butterflies hover in
the subtle atmosphere. The tropic sunset throws a peaceful glamour and
serenity over all. The cocoanut palms, with feathery grace above and
slender column upward rearing, stir not against their ethereal setting
as we watch, and the passing water in the old aqueduct scarce breaks
the tropic silence, or if, perchance, it whisper, murmurs of centuries
past, a low refrain.

But we shall journey away from the haunts of man again, and penetrate
the deep dark _barrancas_ and little-known mountain-fastnesses of the
western slope of the State of Guerrero. Here are great uninhabited and
unexplored stretches of country, rugged and wild, replete with matters
of interest, whether for hunter, sportsman, or archaeologist. Indeed,
it would be difficult to find a region offering so varied a nature of
resource and interest in any part of the world, except possibly in the
still less accessible wilds of the Amazonian slopes of the Peruvian
Andes. The botanist will find on this Pacific side of Mexico an
unstudied _flora_, and the ethnologist and the antiquarian a number of
native races, speaking strange separate languages; and t