by the
preceding day's hurricane, and after nearly an hour's ride, we paused
on the crest of a steep descent, at the foot of which, as our guides
informed us, lay the land of promise, the long looked-for _rancho_.
While the muleteers were seeing to the girths of their beasts, and
giving the due equilibrium to the baggage, before commencing the
downward march, Rowley and I sat upon our mules, wrapped in large
Mexican _capas_, gazing at the morning-star as it sank down and grew
gradually paler and fainter. Suddenly the eastern sky began to
brighten, and a brilliant beam appeared in the west, a point of light
no bigger than a star--but yet not a star; it was of a far rosier hue.
The next moment a second sparkling spot appeared, near to the first,
which now swelled out into a sort of fiery tongue, that seemed to lick
round the silvery summit of the snow-clad mountain. As we gazed,
five--ten--twenty hill tops were tinged with the same rose-coloured
glow; in another moment they became like fiery banners spread out
against the heavens, while sparkling tongues and rays of golden light
flashed and flamed round them, springing like meteors from one
mountain summit to another, lighting them up like a succession of
beacons. Scarcely five minutes had elapsed since the distant pinnacles
of the mountains had appeared to us as huge phantom-like figures of a
silvery white, dimly marked out upon a dark star-spangled ground; now
the whole immense chain blazed like volcanoes covered with glowing
lava, rising out of the darkness that still lingered on their flanks
and bases, visible and wonderful witnesses to the omnipotence of _him_
who said, "Let there be light, and there was light."

Above, all was broad day, flaming sunlight; below, all black night.
Here and there streams of light burst through clefts and openings in
the mountains, and then ensued an extraordinary kind of conflict. The
shades of darkness seemed to live and move, to struggle against the
bright beams that fell amongst them and broke their masses, forcing
them down the wooded heights, tearing them asunder and dispersing them
like tissues of cobwebs; so that successively, and as if by a stroke
of enchantment, there appeared, first the deep indigo blue of the
tamarinds and chicozapotes, then the bright green of the sugar-canes,
lower down the darker green of the nopal-trees, lower still the white
and green and gold and bright yellow of the orange and citron groves,
and lowe