(1896)


Santa Maria was the last Zapotec town; we were on the border of the
country of the Mixes. Starting at seven next morning, we followed a
dizzy trail up the mountain side to the summit. Beyond that the road
went down and up many a slope. A norther was on; cold wind swept over
the crest, penetrating and piercing; cloud masses hung upon the higher
summits; and now and again sheets of fine, thin mist were swept down
upon us by the wind; this mist was too thin to darken the air, but on
the surface of the driving sheets rainbows floated. The ridge, which for
a time we followed, was covered with a thicket of purple-leaved oaks,
which were completely overgrown with bromelias and other air-plants.
From here, we passed into a mountain country that beggars description.
I know and love the Carolina mountains--their graceful forms, their
sparkling streams and springs, the lovely sky stretched above them; but
the millionaires are welcome to their "land of the sky"; we have our
land of the Mixes, and to it they will never come. The mountains here
are like those of Carolina, but far grander and bolder; here the sky is
more amply extended. There, the slopes are clad with rhododendrons and
azaleas, with the flowering shrub, with strawberries gleaming amid
grass; here we have rhododendrons also, in clusters that scent the air
with the odor of cloves, and display sheets of pink and purple bloom;
here we have magnificent tree-ferns, with trunks that rise twenty feet
into the air and unroll from their summits fronds ten feet in length;
fifty kinds of delicate terrestrial ferns display themselves in a single
morning ride; here are palms with graceful foliage; here are orchids
stretching forth sprays--three or four feet long--toward the hand for
plucking; here are pine-trees covering slopes with fragrant fallen
needles. A striking feature is the different flora on the different