MEXICO CHAPTER I A FIRST RECONNAISSANCE Romance of history--Two entrance ways--Vera Cruz--Orizaba--The Great Plateau--Fortress of Ulua--Sierra Madre--Topographical structure--The Gulf coast--Tropical region--Birds, animals, and vegetation of coast zone--_Tierra caliente_--Malaria--Foothills--Romantic scenery--General configuration of Mexico--Climatic zones--Temperate zone--Cold zone--The Cordillera--Snow-capped peaks--Romance of mining--Devout miners-- Subterranean shrines--The great deserts--Sunset on the Great Plateau-- _Coyotes_ and _zopilotes_--Irrigated plantations--Railways--Plateau of Anahuac--The cities of the _mesa central_--Spanish-American civilisation--Romance of Mexican life--Mexican girls, music, and moonlight--The _peones_ and civilisation--American comparisons-- Pleasing traits of the Mexicans--The foreigner in Mexico--Picturesque mining-towns--Wealth of silver--Conditions of travel--Railways-- Invasions--Lerdo's axiom--Roads and horsemen--Strong religious sentiment--Popocatepetl and Ixtaccihuatl--Sun-god of Teotihuacan--City of Mexico--Valley of Mexico--The Sierra Madre--_Divortia aquarum_ of the continent--Volcano of Colima--Forests and ravines--Cuernavaca--The trail of Cortes--Acapulco--Romantic old _haciendas_--Tropic sunset-- Unexplored Guerrero--Perils and pleasures of the trail--Sunset in the Pacific Ocean. Mexico, that southern land lying stretched between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, upon the tapering base of North America, is a country whose name is fraught with colour and meaning. The romance of its history envelops it in an atmosphere of adventure whose charm even the prosaic years of the twentieth century have not entirely dispelled, and the magnetism of the hidden wealth of its soil still invests it with some of the attraction it held for the old Conquistadores. It was in the memorable age of ocean chivalry when this land was first won for Western civilisation: that age when men put forth into a sunset-land of Conquest, whose every shore and mountain-pass concealed some El Dorado of their dreams. The Mexico of to-day is not less interesting, for its vast territory holds a wealth of historic lore and a profusion of natural riches. Beneath the Mexican sky, blue and serene, stretch great tablelands, tropic forests, scorching deserts, and fruitful valleys, crowned by the mineral-girt mountain ranges of the Sierra Madres; and among them lie the strange pyramids of the bygone Aztecs, and the rich silver mines where men of all races have enriched themselves. Mexico is part of that great Land of Opportunity which the Spanish-American world has retained for this century.