Travels over the table lands and cordilleras of MexicoDuring the years 1843 and 44; including a description of California ..and the biographies of Iturbide and Santa Anna . with a beautysurprising to one raised in a more dense and a lower cli-mate. Hence it is, I have no doubt, that that plain has bor-rowed half its charms. Yet to the minds of the conquerors to whom Americawas a new world, and when the valley of Mexico was in astate of nature, not as now, mainly presenting a parchedand barren waste, but under the dominion and care of theAztecs, the forest of ages towering high in the air, and
Travels over the table lands and cordilleras of MexicoDuring the years 1843 and 44; including a description of California ..and the biographies of Iturbide and Santa Anna . with a beautysurprising to one raised in a more dense and a lower cli-mate. Hence it is, I have no doubt, that that plain has bor-rowed half its charms. Yet to the minds of the conquerors to whom Americawas a new world, and when the valley of Mexico was in astate of nature, not as now, mainly presenting a parchedand barren waste, but under the dominion and care of theAztecs, the forest of ages towering high in the air, and cast-ing up its umbrageous branches, relieved and freshened ascene the loveliness of which perhaps might have been un-rivalled; for nature, like the beauty of a woman, is moreadmirable when beheld in its native simplicity ; and it caneasily therefore be accounted for, why the early Spaniardslooked upon the valley of Tenochtitlan, so called by the In-dians, as the promised land—the Elysium upon earth. I here quote the scientific outlines of the geographyof the Mexican Valley, by Mr. Prescott, as they could nothave come under the immediate knowledge of a TRAVELS IN MEXICO. 75 Midway across the continent, somewhat nearer the Pacificthan the Atlantic ocean, at an elevation of nearly seventhousand five hundred feet, is the celebrated valley of Mex-ico. It is of an oval form, about sixty-seven leagues in cir-cumference, and is encompassed by a towering rampart ofporphyritic rocks, which nature seems to have provided,though ineffectually, to protect it from invasion. He alsoremarks that five lakes are spread over the valley, occu-pying one-tenth of its surface. Thus, as it were, at oneview, bursts upon the astonished traveller, village, city, lakes,plains, and mountains, together with a view of the culture,and the different kinds of crops, as husbanded by the Mexi-cans, to interest the beholder, as he journeys along. I could only admire the extensive fields spread out be
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