We must hasten to our journey's end, which, for the present, is Jalapa. While here, we can sum up the story of our eighteen hours' ride. From Vera Cruz we passed through a tropical marsh, presenting a striking contrast to what we had witnessed about that town. In place of being surrounded by hot, shifting hillocks of sand, we were in the midst of tropical vegetation. Trees not only bore their own natural burdens, but were borne down with creepers, vines, and parasitic plants; forming one strange mass of foliage of very many distinct kinds matted together and mingled into one. Plantations of vanilla, of coffee, of cocoa, or of sugar-cane, nowhere approached our road; nor were the cocoa-nut, the banana, and the plantain, so familiar in all tropical climates, often visible. Upon the whole route there were little evidences of labor, except those furnished by the road itself. It was all wilderness. Yet the graceful features of the creepers, hanging from branch to branch of the sycamores, and the shady arbors formed by their dense foliage, looked as though a gardener's hand could be traced in so much regularity; yet it was only Nature's own gardening, where the wild birds might build their nests, and breed, and sing without fear of disturbance. How often have I dismounted, while riding along such a forest, by the side of some running brook, and while my horse was feeding I have almost fallen asleep under the soothing influence which such an atmosphere produces upon a traveler, heated by fast riding under a vertical sun. It is one of those happy sensations that can not well be described, nor can it be appreciated by those who have not experienced it. Poets have exhausted their power in painting the beauties of scenes where all the senses are satiated with enjoyment. Yet this voluptuous gratification is soon alloyed by the evils that remind us that Paradise is not to be found upon this earth. Here is seen the whole animal kingdom busily laboring for the destruction of its kind. Reptiles prey upon each other; parasitic plants fix themselves upon trees and suck up the sap of their existence; and man, while he enjoys to a surfeit these bounties of nature, must watch narrowly against the venom and the poison that comes to mar his pleasure, and teach him the wholesome lesson that true happiness is only found in Heaven. We are now at our journey's end. CHAPTER IV. Jalapa.--The extraordinary Beauty and Fertility of this Spot.--Jalap, Sarsaparilla, Myrtle, Vanilla, Cochineal, and Wood of Tobasco.--The charming Situation of Jalapa.--Its Flowers and its Fruits.--Magnificent Views.--The tradition that Jalapa was Paradise.--A speck of War.--The Marriage of a Heretic.--A gambling Scene in a Convent. Byron's lines, in the opening of "The Bride of Abydos" are gorgeous enough: