The custom officials are very polite and soon affix the necessary label “despachado” to the baggage. “_Vamonos_” (we go) replaces the familiar “all aboard,” and the train moves out over a country as flat and dreary as a desert. By whichever route the traveller enters Mexico, the journey is very uninteresting for the first half day. There is nothing to relieve the monotony except the telephone and telegraph poles, with their picturesque cross-arms standing out on the desert waste like giant sentinels. There is no vegetation except the prickly pear, cactus, and feather duster palms, for frequently no rain falls for years at a time. It seems almost impossible that anything can get moisture from the parched air of these plains. But nature has strange ways of adapting life to conditions. A good illustration of this is seen in the _ixtle_, a species of cactus whose leaves look as if they could not absorb any moisture because of a hard varnish-like coat. Whenever any water in the form of dew or rain appears, however, this glaze softens and the plant absorbs all the moisture available and then glazes over again as soon as the sun comes out. There is very little life here. Sometimes at the stations a few adobe huts are seen where dwell the section hands, and a few goats are visible which, no doubt, find the prickly pear and cactus with an occasional railroad spike thrown in for variety, much more satisfying than an unchanging diet of tin cans such as falls to the lot of the city goat. The mountain ranges then appear, and never is the traveller out of sight of them in Mexico. On either side, toward the east and toward the west, is a range with an ever varying outline, sometimes near, then far,—advancing and retreating. At a distance in this clear atmosphere their rough features are mellowed by a soft haze into amethyst and purple; nearer they sometimes rise like a camp of giants and are the most fantastic mountains that earthquakes ever made in sport, looking as if nature had laughed herself into the convulsions in which they were formed. The Mexican National Railway follows a broad road that was formerly an Indian trail, and the track crosses and recrosses this highway many times. By this same route it is probable that early Mexican races entered that country and marched down toward the Valley of Mexico. It was by this way that General Taylor invaded the country during the Mexican War and several engagements took place along the line of this railroad.