be of stone; the walls neatly whitewashed, and bordered with pink, red, blue, green, or yellow; and the streets are fashioned to suit the grounds, without regard to checker-board regularity. I stood in an upper story of the house of a Mr. Todd, on the opposite side of the little stream that runs in front of the town, and looked out from that favored position. The sun had just escaped from the folds of an imprisoning cloud, and was shining full upon the beautiful town and hill. The unabsorbed moisture on the leaves gave them an additional lustre. The green peering up every where amidst the whitened walls; the graceful form of the trees, where their outline could be traced; the curiously shaped roofs of the old stone churches, with buttresses and towers; the college of San Francisco, a curiously fashioned pile of buildings, standing out above all others; the hill behind the town, the lofty mountain of Perote, on its left flank, on whose top the sky seemed to rest--all combined to give credibility to that which has been said of the beauty of Jalapa by an old Spanish author--that Jalapa was "a piece of heaven let down to earth." This figure was afterward applied to Naples, and the remark was added--"See Naples, and die." But the Jalapanos say, "See Jalapa, and pray for immortality, that you may enjoy it forever." It is the boast of the Indian, that "Jalapa is Paradise." One is almost tempted to agree with them; for here grow all plants that are pleasant to the eye, or good for food. Adam and Eve were not placed in the garden to plant and to sow, but to prune and dress the plants that grew of themselves. Here grow an abundance of broad-leaved plants, and for thread there is the fibre of the _maguey_, or century plant; while the thorns of the cactus are the needles used among the natives; so that all the materials were at ready hand for making their garments, as soon as our first parents had their eyes opened--by taking Jalap, I suppose--and so discovering that they were naked. It is a curious conceit, that the sin of Adam, in introducing a parasite into Eden, entailed a curse on this medicinal plant, which from that day, the story goes, has for very shame hid its face by day, and only by night opened its pretty scarlet flowers, which close again as the morning light appears.