that he is in a lapidated and dilapidated condition. Such environs! the surrounding houses black with smoke of powder or with fire—a view of bare red sand-hills all round—not a tree, or shrub, or flower, or bird, except the horrid black sopilote, or police officer. All looks as if the prophet Jeremiah had passed through the city denouncing wo to the dwellers thereof. Such a melancholy, wholly deserted looking burial ground as we saw!
War and revolutions have no doubt done their work, yet I find difficulty in believing those who speak of Vera Cruz as having been a gay and delightful residence in former days, though even now, those who have resided here for any length of time, even foreigners, almost invariably become attached to it; and as for those born here, they are the truest of patriots, holding up Vera Cruz as superior to all other parts of the world.
The city was founded by the Viceroy, Count de Monterey, at the end of the seventeenth century, and ought not to be confounded, as it sometimes is, with either of the two colonies founded by the first Spaniards. Built in front of the island of San Juan de Ulua, it has one interesting recollection attached to it, since on these same arid shores, Cortes disembarked more than three centuries ago. Unlike the green and fertile coast which gladdened the eyes of Columbus, the Spanish conqueror beheld a bleak and burning desert, whose cheerless aspect might well have deterred a feebler mind from going further in search of the paradise that existed behind.
We returned to the house, and heard some ladies
