"Know ye the land of the cedar and vine, Where the flowers ever blossom, the beams ever shine; Where the light wings of Zephyr, oppress'd with perfume, Wax faint o'er the gardens of Gull in their bloom; Where the citron and olive are fairest of fruit, And the voice of the nightingale never is mute." But the poet would have given them a still more luxuriant coloring had he ever ascended the table-land of the tropics, and visited Jalapa, the spot which the natives insist was the site of the original Paradise. Paradise, jalapa, and myrtle, sound well enough together, and do not clash with the native tradition in relation to this delightful spot. PRODUCTIONS OF THE VALLEYS. We were now more than four thousand feet above the sea, on an extensive plateau, half-way up the mountain. The beautiful _convolvulus jalapa_ does not flourish here, but is brought from the Indian villages of Colipa and Maqautla, situated in the valleys that run among the hills. The _myrtle_, whose grain is the spice of Tobasco, is produced in the forests by the river Boriderus; the _smilax_, whose root is the true sarsaparilla, grows deep down in the humid and umbrageous ravines of the Cordilleras; and cocoa comes from Acayucan. From the ever-green forests of Papantla and Nautla comes the _epidendrum vanilla_, whose odoriferous fruit is used as a perfume. Thus these characteristic productions of the country come from the mysterious valleys of the neighboring mountain, where, nearly a thousand years before any of the present generation was born, flourished an unknown race of men as civilized as were the people of Palmyra or of Egypt, as vast ruins in the forests of Misantla and Papantla clearly indicate: a race unknown to the degenerate Indians, who now wander about the ruined edifices and isolated pyramids of these cities, lost in the forest, as they are to us. A thousand years have passed away--their history has perished forever. The old books say that the delicate little scarlet insect, cochineal, was once a product of this district, and Jalapa was its proper market, and the mart of all the other peculiar productions of the neighboring region, because it was the town on the high land nearest to the sea-port. [Illustration: JALAPA.] Jalapa early became an important position to which foreign goods were brought to be exchanged for silver and gold, jalap, sarsaparilla, vanilla, spice of Tobasco, cocoa, cochineal, and woods of various colors.