Midway across the continent of North America, where it narrows towards a point between the Gulf of Mexico and the Pacific, the civilisation of the New World appears to have converged at the close of the fifteenth century. Here the traveller from the Atlantic coast, after passing through gorgeous tropical flowers and aromatic shrubs of the deadly _tierra caliente_, emerges at length into a purer atmosphere. The vanilla, the indigo, and flowering cacao-groves are gradually left behind. The sugar-cane and the banana next disappear; and he looks down through the gorges of the elevated _tierra templada_ on the vegetation of the tropics, carpeting, and scenting with its luscious but deadly odours, the region which stretches along the Mexican Gulf. Higher still are regions where the wheat and other grains of Europe’s temperate zone replace the tall native maize; until at length he enters the _tierra fria_: climbing a succession of terraces representing every zone of temperature, till he rests on the summit of the Cordillera. Beyond this the volcanic peaks of the Andes tower into the regions of perpetual snow; while the traveller crosses the once thickly-wooded table-land into the valley of Mexico: an oval basin about sixty-seven leagues in circumference, and elevated beyond the deadly malaria and enervating heat of the coast, into a temperate climate, nearly seven thousand five hundred feet above the sea. Here, encompassed by the salt marshes of the Tezcucan Lake, stood the ancient Tenochtitlan or Mexico, “The Venice of the Aztecs.” In the month of October 1519, Don Diego de Ordaz effected the ascent of the volcanic Popocatepetl, from whence he beheld the valley of Mexico with its curious chain of lakes; and caught a glimpse of the far-famed capital of Montezuma, with its white towers and pyramidal teocallis reflecting back the sun from their stuccoed walls. The scene seemed to realise such a dream of romance as Bernal Diaz reports of Cempoal: “The Buildings,” he says, “having been lately whitewashed and plastered, one of our horsemen was so struck with the splendour of their appearance in the sun, that he came back in full speed to Cortes to tell him that the walls of the houses were of silver!” The men of that generation which witnessed the discoveries of mighty empires, and an El Dorado beyond the known limits of the world, had their imaginations expanded to the reception of any conceivable wonders. Sir Thomas More constructed his _Utopia_ out of such materials; and Othello styles his wonderful relations “of antres vast and deserts idle,” a “traveller’s history.”