He is now beyond the influence of the deadly _vomito_ on the confines of the _tierra templada_, or temperate region, where evergreen oaks begin to remind him of the forests of central Europe. The features of the scenery become grand, and even terrible. His road sweeps along the base of mighty mountains, once gleaming with volcanic fires, and still glistening in their mantles of snow, which serve as beacons to the mariner for many a league at sea. All along he beholds traces of their ancient combustion as his road passes over vast tracts of lava, bristling in the fantastic forms into which the fiery torrent has been thrown by obstacles in its career. Perhaps at the same moment, as he casts his eyes down one of those unfathomable ravines or barrancas, which often, to a depth of more than 1,200 feet, rend the mountain-side, he sees its sheltered and sultry recesses glowing with the rich vegetation of the tropics: as if these wonderful regions were anxious to exhibit, at one glance, the boundless variety of their flora. Cactuses, euphorbias, and dracænæ, with a multitude of minor plants, cling to the rocky walls; while in the depth of the gorge stand huge laurels, fig-trees, and bombaceæ, whose blossoms exhale almost overpowering odours, and whose trunks are covered with magnificent creepers, expanding their gay petals in the torpid air. Still pressing upwards, he mounts into regions favourable to other kinds of cultivation. He has traced the yellow maize growing from the lowest level; but he now first sees fields of wheat and the other European cereals, brought into the country by the Spanish conquerors, and with these, plantations of the American agave, which, among other uses, provides the Mexican with his favourite beverage. The oaks acquire a sturdier growth; and at an elevation of about eight thousand feet, the dark forests of pine announce that he has entered the _tierra fria_, or cold region,--the third and last of the great natural terraces into which the country is divided. * * * * * Loaded with vapours, the prevailing southerly sea-winds, after crossing the dead level occupied by the delta of the Ganges and Burrampooter, strike against the mountain-spurs of Sikkim, the dampest region of that stupendous chain, and expending their moisture on their flanks, clothe them with a thick mantle of verdure to an enormous height. The giant peaks of Donkiah, Kinchinghow, and Kinchinginga, the third great mountain of the world (28,178 feet), form the culminating points of this magnificently wooded region, and look down upon the dense forests which, varying as they rise, extend between the plains of Bengal and their own perpetual snows.