nearer to the sky--up the steep sides of
the Cordilleras--up to the _tierra fria_.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

I stand ten thousand feet above the level of the ocean. I am under the
deep shadows of a forest. Huge trunks grow around me, hindering a
distant view. Where am I? Not in the tropic, surely, for these trees
are of a northern _sylva_. I recognise the gnarled limbs and lobed
leaves of the oak, the silvery branches of the mountain-ash, the cones
and needles of the pine. The wind, as it swirls among the dead leaves,
causes me to shiver; and high up among the twigs there is the music of
winter in its moaning. Yet I am in the torrid zone; and the same sun
that now glances coldly through the boughs of the oak, but a few hours
before scorched me as it glistened from the fronds of the palm-tree.

The forest opens, and I behold hills under culture--fields of hemp and
flax, and the hardy cereals of the frigid zone. The rancho of the
husbandman is a log cabin, with shingled roof and long projecting eaves,
unlike the dwellings either of the great _valus_ or the _tierras
calientes_. I pass the smoking pits of the "carbonero", and I meet the
"arriero" with his "atajo" of mules heavily laden with ice of the
glaciers. They are passing with their cargoes, to cool the wine-cups in
the great cities of the plains.

Upward and upward! The oak is left behind, and the pine grows stunted
and dwarfish. The wind blows colder and colder. A wintry aspect is
around me.

Upward still. The pine disappears. No vegetable form is seen save the
mosses and lichens that cling to the rocks, as within the Arctic Circle.
I am on the selvage of the snow--the eternal snow. I walk upon
glaciers, and through their translucent mass I behold the lichens
growing beneath.

The scene is bleak and desolate, and I am chilled to the marrow of my
bones.

_Excelsior! excelsior_! The highest point is not yet reached. Through
drifts of snow and over fields of ice, up steep ledges, along the
slippery escarpment that overhangs the giddy abysm, with wearied knees,
and panting breath, and frozen fingers, onward and upward I go. Ha! I
have won the goal. I am on the summit!

I stand on the "cumbre" of Orizava--the mountain of the "burning star"--
more than three miles above the ocean level. My face is turned to the
east, and I look downward. The snow, the cincture of lichens and naked
rocks, the