is carried on by French or
German residents who have become acclimated, or by those born here of
parents belonging to those nationalities. Many of the merchants of the
city keep up a permanent residence at Jalapa for sanitary reasons. It is
singular that the climate of this port on the Gulf side of the peninsula
should be so fatal to human life, while the Pacific side, in the same
latitude and quite near at hand, is perfectly salubrious. When the
French army landed here in 1863-64, the ranks were decimated by the
epidemic, and the graveyard where the bodies of between three and four
thousand French victims lie buried near the city has been named by their
countrymen, with grim humor, "Le Jardin d'Acclimatation"!

On viewing the town from the castle of San Juan d'Ulloa, one is struck
by the oriental aspect which it presents. Everything is seen through a
lurid atmosphere. The glare of sunshine reflected by the porcelain
domes and the intense blue of the sky are Egyptian. Groups of mottled
church towers surmounted by glittering crosses; square, flat-roofed
houses; rough fortifications; a long reach of hot sandy plain on either
side relieved by a few palm-trees; and scattered groups of low-growing
cactus,--these make up the picture of the flat, miasmatic shore. There
are no suburbs; the dreary, monotonous sand creeps close up to the city.
But if the near foreground thus exhibits a certain repulsive nakedness,
there looms grandly on the far-away horizon the Sierra Madre range of
mountains, the culminating point of which is the bold, aspiring peak of
Orizaba. It must be clear weather, however, to enable the visitor to see
this remarkable elevation, with its hoary crown, to reach whose base
twenty-seven leagues must be traversed.

The long, straight, narrow streets are laid out with great uniformity, a
characteristic of all Mexican cities, and cross each other at right
angles, the monotony being broken by green blinds opening on to the
little balconies which are shaded by awnings. The streets have a sort of
sun-baked hue, though the principal thoroughfares show a fair degree of
life and activity considering that the population is so largely made up
of Mexicans. The area covered by the city cannot much exceed sixty
acres, the town being built in a very compact manner, a bird's-eye view
of which makes it resemble the outspread human hand. The port has seen
its most prosperous days, if we may judge by present appearances. The
agg