When we reached the rancho we thought of passing another night there; but the Indians who had gone down to the valley for corn had not returned, and everything was eaten up except beans, which are all very well as accessories to dinner, but our English digestions could not stand living upon them; so we started at once for San Nícolas de los Ranchos. Our ride was down a deep ravine, by the side of a mountain-torrent coming down from the snows of Popocatepetl; and, when we stopped now and then to look behind us, we had one of the grandest views which I have ever witnessed. The elements of the picture were simple enough. A deep gorge at our feet, with a fierce torrent rushing down it, dark pine-trees all round us, and above us—on either side—a snow-covered mountain towering up into the sky. We were just in the track of the Spanish invaders, who crossed most likely by this very road between the two volcanos; and they record the amazement which they felt that in the tropics snow should be unmelted upon the mountains.
A few hours riding down the steep descent, and we were in the flat plain of Puebla. There were our two mountains behind us, but now they looked as we had so often seen them before from a distance. The power of realizing their size was gone, and with it most of their grandeur and beauty. Nothing was left us but a vivid recollection of the wonderful scenes that were before us a few hours ago, impressions not likely to be ever effaced from our minds, where the picture of the great snowy cone seen in the bright moonlight, and the descent between the mountains, remain indelibly impressed as the types of all that is most grand and impressive in the scenery of lofty mountains.
We slept at San Nícolas de los Ranches, “St. Nicholas of the huts,” where the shopkeeper, to whom we had a letter, insisted upon turning out of his own room for us, and treated us like princes. The reason of our often