efore attempting to ascend to such a
height. Guides, blankets, and two days' provisions should be taken by
any party designing to climb Orizaba. One must seek a favorable point in
the limits of the town to see this elevation to advantage, because of
the close intervening hills. On the west side of the town is an
elevation known as El Borrego, where five thousand Mexicans were
completely routed by a single company of Zouaves during the
ill-conceived French invasion. To be sure, this was a night surprise,
wherein the French appeared among the sleeping Mexicans and cut them
down as fast as they opened their eyes, until the whole camp took to
flight. The importance of military discipline was never more clearly
demonstrated. Probably the average of the Mexican soldiers were of
nearly as good material as the French, but the former were little better
than a mob, each man for himself. Even to-day, it is observed, in the
few military exhibitions given in public, that the rank and file are
lackadaisical, indifferent, undrilled, evincing a want of nearly every
element of discipline, while their officers lounge along the
avenues,--they do not _march_,--presenting an appearance as far from
true military bearing as the greatest clown in the ranks.

It will be remembered that Orizaba was for a considerable time the
headquarters of General Bazaine's army, and it was here that the French
general finally, in 1866, bade good-by to the ill-fated Maximilian,
whose cause he deserted by order of his royal master, Napoleon the
Little. Stories are told by the residents of the outrages committed by
the French soldiers, who were permitted unlimited license by their
commander. "The whole army," said an aged citizen to us, "was a body of
cutthroats. They stole everything they could carry away, besides which,
cruel and aimless murder was their daily diversion."

The small plaza is a delightful resort, a wilderness of green with an
ornamental fountain in the middle, about which are stone seats among
flowering shrubs, orange and other fruit trees. Indeed, the entire
surroundings of Orizaba are gardenlike in fertility and bloom. The
vegetation, owing to the humidity of the atmosphere rising from the
Gulf, is always intensely green. Huge butterflies flitted in clouds
about the plaza, many-colored, sunshine-loving creatures, with
widespread, yellow wings shot with purple bars, and bearing strongly
contrasting dots of inky-black and lily-white. A tall cl