the Indian villages of
Colipa and Maqautla, situated in the valleys that run among the hills.
The _myrtle_, whose grain is the spice of Tobasco, is produced in the
forests by the river Boriderus; the _smilax_, whose root is the true
sarsaparilla, grows deep down in the humid and umbrageous ravines of
the Cordilleras; and cocoa comes from Acayucan. From the ever-green
forests of Papantla and Nautla comes the _epidendrum vanilla_, whose
odoriferous fruit is used as a perfume. Thus these characteristic
productions of the country come from the mysterious valleys of the
neighboring mountain, where, nearly a thousand years before any of the
present generation was born, flourished an unknown race of men as
civilized as were the people of Palmyra or of Egypt, as vast ruins in
the forests of Misantla and Papantla clearly indicate: a race unknown
to the degenerate Indians, who now wander about the ruined edifices and
isolated pyramids of these cities, lost in the forest, as they are to
us. A thousand years have passed away--their history has perished
forever. The old books say that the delicate little scarlet insect,
cochineal, was once a product of this district, and Jalapa was its
proper market, and the mart of all the other peculiar productions of
the neighboring region, because it was the town on the high land
nearest to the sea-port.

[Illustration: JALAPA.]

Jalapa early became an important position to which foreign goods were
brought to be exchanged for silver and gold, jalap, sarsaparilla,
vanilla, spice of Tobasco, cocoa, cochineal, and woods of various
colors.

It is the beauty of the place itself, and the unsurpassed magnificence
of its mountain-scenery, that throws such a charm around Jalapa. The
transparency of its atmosphere makes the snow-crowned Orizaba and
Perote, in the coast range of mountains, appear close at hand, with
their dense forests of perpetual foliage, moistened incessantly by the
clouds driven upon them from the ocean. High up in the region of
perpetual moisture, Jalapa has a soil intensely luxuriant, and is
beyond the reach of those parasitic plants of the low lands, that fix
themselves upon other plants and trees, and eat out their very life, as
the malarias do that of the human being. Roses of the most choice
varieties grow spontaneously by the roadside, or creep over the walls.
Nature, the parent of architects, has here shaped all her trees upon
the most exquisite models. The very twig plante