of April, during which period any part of the state is comparatively
healthy. A list of the native products would surprise one. Among them we
find tobacco, coffee, sugar, cotton, wheat, barley, vanilla, pineapples,
oranges, lemons, bananas, pomegranates, peaches, plums, apricots,
tamarinds, watermelons, citrons, pears, and many other fruits and
vegetables. The natives push a stick into the ground, drop in a kernel
or two of corn, cover them with the soil by a mere brush of their feet,
and ninety days after they pluck the ripe ears. There is no other labor,
no fertilizer is used, nor is there any occasion for consulting the
season, for the seed will ripen and yield its fruit each month of the
year, if planted at suitable intervals.

CHAPTER XVII.

Jalapa.--A Health Resort.--Birds, Flowers, and Fruits.--Cerro Gordo.--
Cathedral.--Earthquakes.--Local Characteristics.--Vanilla.--Ancient
Ruins.--Tortillas.--Blondes in a City of Brunettes.--Curiosities of
Mexican Courtship.--Caged Singing Birds.--Banditti Outwitted.--
Socialistic Indians.--Traces of a Lost City.--Guadalajara.--On the
Mexican Plateau.--A Progressive Capital.--Fine Modern Buildings.--
The Cathedral.--Native Artists.--A Noble Institution.--Amusements.
--San Pedro.--Evening in the Plaza.--A Ludicrous Carnival.--Judas
Day.

Jalapa, signifying "the place of water and land,"--pronounced
Halapa,--is situated about sixty miles north-northwest of Vera Cruz, and
is considered to be the sanitarium of the latter city, whither many of
the families who are able to do so resort during the sickly season. Not
a few of the prosperous merchants maintain dwellings in both cities. Its
situation insures salubrity, as it is more than four thousand feet
higher than the seacoast. The yellow fever may terrorize the lowlands
and blockade the shores of the Gulf of Mexico, as it surely does at
certain seasons of the year, from Yucatan to Vera Cruz, but the
atmosphere of the highlands, commencing at Jalapa on the north and
Orizaba on the south, is, as a rule, full of life-invigorating
properties. We do not mean to say that these places are absolutely free
from yellow fever and miasmatic illness, but they are so far superior
to Vera Cruz in this respect as to be considered health-resorts for the
people on the shores of the Gulf. The route to Jalapa from the coast
passes through the old national road by the way of Cerro Gordo. The
hamlet bearing th