eight in the coach, which was drawn by as many mules--four
merchants, two priests, myself and the lady who afterwards became my
wife. She was a blue-eyed and fair-haired American from New York. Her
name, I soon discovered, was Emma Becker, and her father, who was dead,
had been a lawyer. We made friends at once, and before we had jolted
ten miles on our journey I learned her story. It seemed that she was an
orphan with a very small fortune, and only one near relative, an aunt
who had married a Mexican named Gomez, the owner of a fine range or
_hacienda_ situated on the border of the highlands, about eighty miles
from the City of Mexico. On the death of her father, being like most
American girls adventurous and independent, Miss Becker had accepted
an invitation from her aunt Gomez and her husband to come and live with
them a while. Now, quite alone and unescorted, she was on her way to
Mexico City, where she expected to be met by some friends of her uncle.

We started from Vera Cruz about mid-day and slept, or rather passed the
night, at a filthy inn alive with every sort of insect pest. Two hours
before dawn we were bundled into the _diligencia_ and slowly dragged up
a mountain road so steep that, notwithstanding the blows and oaths of
the drivers, the mules had to stop every few hundred yards to rest. I
remember that at last I fell asleep, my head reposing on the shoulder
of a very fat priest, who snored tempestuously, then awoke to pray, then
snored again. It was the voice of Miss Becker, who sat opposite to me,
that wakened me.

"Forgive me for disturbing you, Dr. Therne," she said, "but you really
must look," and she pointed through the window of the coach.

Following her hand I saw a sight which no one who has witnessed it can
ever forget: the sun rising on the mighty peak of Orizaba, the Star
Mountain, as the old Aztecs named it. Eighteen thousand feet above our
heads towered the great volcano, its foot clothed with forests, its cone
dusted with snow. The green flanks of the peak and the country beneath
them were still wrapped in shadow, but on its white and lofty crest
already the lights of dawn were burning. Never have I seen anything more
beautiful than this soaring mountain top flaming like some giant torch
over a world of darkness; indeed, the unearthly grandeur of the sight
amazed and half paralysed my mind.

A lantern swung from the roof of the coach, and, turning my eyes from
the mountain, in its light