is name, where General Scott outflanked and defeated
Santa Anna, April 18, 1847, consists of a few mud cabins in a
tumble-down condition. It has become a memorable spot, but save its
historical association is possessed of no attractions. It is not a
populous district: there are few haciendas met with, and fewer hamlets,
but the scenery is very grand, and the vegetation is characterized by
all the luxuriance of the tropics. Birds and flowers abound, and wild
fruits are so plenty that they ripen and decay undisturbed by the hands
of the natives. Nature is over-bountiful, over-prolific. There is no
sere and yellow leaf here--fruits and flowers are perennial. If a leaf
falls, another springs into life on the vacant stem. If fruit is
plucked, a blossom quickly appears and another cluster ripens.

Of birds distinguished for beauty of plumage and sweetness of song there
are, according to Clavigero, between fifty and sixty different species.
Of those suitable for food there are over seventy sorts in the republic,
according to the same authority. The rage for brilliant-colored feathers
with which to decorate the bonnets of fashionable ladies in American
cities has led to great destruction among tropical birds of both Mexico
and South America. Here they have also been always in demand for the
purpose of producing what is termed feather pictures, as elsewhere
described in these pages.

The road is very tortuous, winding up long hills and down steep gulches,
with here and there a rude, significant wooden cross, held in place by a
little mound of stones, raised above the burial-place of some murdered
man. This, it seems, is a conscientious service always rendered in
Mexico by any one who is the first to discover such a body. Each native
who afterwards passes the spot adds a small store to the pile, and
kneeling, utters a brief prayer in behalf of the dead man's soul.

Jalapa has a permanent population of some fourteen thousand, which is
considerably increased at certain seasons of the year. It contains a
large, well-appointed cathedral, with a number of other Catholic
churches. Cortez and his followers covered the land with cathedrals and
demi-cathedrals, but the disestablishment of the church and the general
confiscation of ecclesiastical property has rendered it impossible to
sustain them all, together with the crowds of officiating priests. The
consequence is that here, as elsewhere in the republic, many are
crumbling into deca