than look at it from a distance, the more especially as there had been a heavy fall of snow upon it a day or two before. We presented our letter to the Spaniard who kept the great shop at Amecameca, and asked him, casually, about the mountain. He assured us that the surface of the snow would be frozen over, and that instead of being a disadvantage the fall of snow was in our favour, for it was easier to climb over frozen snow than up a loose heap of volcanic ashes. So we sent for the guide, a big man, who used to manage the sulphur-workings in the crater until that undertaking was given up. He set to work to get things ready for the expedition, and we strolled out for a walk.
Close by the town is a “sacred mount,” with little stations, and on one day in the year numbers of pilgrims come to visit the place. Near the top, the Indian lad who came with us showed us the mouth of a cavern, which leads by subterranean passages under the sea to Rome—as caverns not unfrequently do in Roman Catholic countries! What was more worth noticing was that here there was a cypress-tree, covered with votive offerings, like the great ahuchuete in the valley above Chalma; so that it is likely that the place was sacred long before chapels and stations were built upon it. Our guide told us that whenever a man touched the tree, all feeling of weariness left him. How characteristic this superstition is of a nation of carriers of burdens!
In the afternoon we started—ourselves, our guide, and an Indian to carry cloaks, &c. up the mountain. We soon left the cultivated region, and entered upon the pine-forest, which we never left during our afternoon journey. One of the first showers of the rainy season came down upon us as we rode through the forest. It only lasted half an hour, but it was a deluge. In a shower of the same kind at Tezcuco, a day or two before, rain to the amount of 1-1/10 inches fell in the hour. By dusk we reached the highest habitation in North America, the place where the sulphur used to be sublimed from the pumice brought down from the crater. This place was shut up, for the undertaking has been abandoned; but in a