Between Orizaba and Cordoba, a distance of sixteen miles, is perhaps the best cultivated section in Mexico. The products of all the zones are mingled and corn and coffee grow side by side as well as peach trees and the banana. Cordoba is just on the border of the _tierra caliente_, or hot country proper, and is a much smaller city than Orizaba. It is a very old town and was founded as a place of refuge from the malarial fevers of the coast lands. This region is noted for its fine coffee, and there are numberless coffee plantations as well as many sugar _haciendas_. The Mexican of the tropics can be seen here dressed in immaculate white. Leaving Cordoba dense tropical forests of palm and palmetto begin to appear. These alternate with groves of coffee and bananas, gardens of mangoes, fields of pineapples and other tropical fruits. Nature begins to manifest herself in her grandest productions. Birds of brilliant plumage are seen. The towering trees, rocks and entire surface of the soil are covered with bright flowers such as orchids, oleanders and honeysuckles and luxuriant vines. These and the dense jungles are all reminders that the tropics have been reached at last. Soon the train enters Vera Cruz, the city without cabs, the landing-place of the great conquistador and his cohorts. The principal port now, as it has always been since the landing of Cortez on the twenty-first day of April, 1519, is Vera Cruz, or, as he named it, _La Villa Rica de Vera Cruz_—the Rich City of the True Cross. Most Americans who pass through here leave by the very first train or boat for fear of pestilence. I met one fellow-countryman there who was almost beside himself because the boat he had expected to take was delayed a couple of days. This city is reputed to be the favourite loafing-place of the _stegomyia fasciata_ whose bite results in the _vomito_, or yellow fever. If all the sensational reports sent out concerning this city were true then “Pandora’s box was not a circumstance to the evils which Vera Cruz contains.” I had read in Mr. Ober’s excellent work on Mexico of an American consul who died here just thirteen days after reaching the port that his ambition had led him to; and of the terrible ravages of the scourge when deaths were averaging forty per day. I arrived there after night had set in. Eating a light supper and seeing that my name was duly posted on the big blackboard bulletin according to the custom prevailing there, I retired to my room, and only breathed freely after securely drawing the mosquito netting around my bed so that it would be impossible for a _stegomyia_ to get through.