into the infected region one hour before it was imperatively necessary.
At length all seemed arranged. We despatched the bulk of our baggage to the coast, by the arrieros; the precise hour of sailing seemed fixed, and determining to take a circuitous road to Puebla de los Angeles, we counted upon arriving at Jalapa some days before the time specified, and on remaining there till the very last moment before we should be obliged to go on board.
In defiance of the businesslike duties which occupied us the latter days of our stay, however, I contrived to extend my knowledge of the vicinity of the capital by various excursions of a greater or lesser range from the barriers. And from these, you may pardon my singling out one, which I made to the Desierto, a ruined and forsaken Carmelite monastery, perched on the sierra to the westward, about seven leagues distant from the capital. My companion for the day was an English resident of the city; and two mounted domestics completed our company.
We left the city at sunrise, and passing along the line of the aqueduct to Chapultepec, followed the road to the left towards Tacubaya. We skirted that beautiful village, and began the ascent of the sterile, upland tract immediately behind, by the main road leading across the mountains to the elevated plateau of Toluca.[1]
The bareness of the first part of the ascent is extreme; and cultivation is confined to a few plantations of maguey in the vicinity of the scattered villages, or on the immediate border of the rivulets flowing down the barrancas, with which the flanks of the mountains are seen lo be everywhere furrowed. All these slopes were once covered with forests, but the heedless destruction of the
- ↑ The table land of Toluca lies 8,530 feet over the Pacific, and nearly eleven hundred over the valley of Mexico. It is the most elevated of the four principal plateaux of Mexico, but produces fine crops of maguey and maize.
