A series of the most gorgeous mountain vistas, tunnel after tunnel, and in between each darkness a world of beauty. Lovely palms abound, delicate yet definite in their flowery symmetry. The Pico de Orizaba has made various farewell appearances, one more enchanting and regretful than the other. Now a great plain is rolling away, of seemingly incredible fertility, with shadows of clouds on its shining stretches. The faithful banana, which was first brought to this continent by a Dominican monk, _via_ Haiti, about the time of the Conquest certainly came into its own in this hot, moist land. One of the early ecclesiastical writers in Mexico was so impressed that he hazards the statement that it was the forbidden fruit that tempted Eve. It certainly continues to tempt both sexes and all ages to idleness. _Later._ Presidio, in the cañon of the Rio Blanco. I have been absorbed in watching the tropical jungles, where form is eliminated. Every tree is choked or cloaked by some sort of enveloping _convolvuli_; every wall has its formless abundant covering. No silhouettes anywhere, no "cut" to anything--which is why all this richness could, I imagine, get monotonous. Tierra Blanca, _3.30_. In the "blazing tropics"! A heavy, hot atmosphere comes in at the window. All along there has been much sitting of a dark race under banana-trees, where not even a change of position seems necessary in order to be fed. We have had a long wait here at Tierra Blanca, which is the junction of a branch line to Vera Cruz, and I have been watching station life. It's very highly colored. Here and there appears an unmistakably American face--the "exploiters" some would call them; but it seems to me they gather up all this vague splendor, this endless abundance, into something definite, with benefits to the greater number, though some get "left," of course. There is a decided note of _carpe diem_ transposed into orange, scarlet, and black, which all the coming and going of men, women, and children with baskets of coffee-beans doesn't do away with. In the tropics the white man is king, be he Yankee, Spaniard, or Northman, and it is part of the lure. The abundances of Mother Earth are for his harvesting; a strange, native race seems there to do him honor, render him service, asking only in return enough of the abundance to keep soul in body for the allotted span.