frame, and yielding a profusion of blossoms, and a fruit—the granada—which almost equals in richness and delicacy the fruit of the chirimoya. But all the natural wonders of this town are not yet enumerated; for the fruits as well as the flowers of every climate flourish in Jalapa. There are strawberries, of the largest size, growing beside a coffee-tree the tree being filled with coffee-berries. Peach-trees were in full blossom in November, beside apricots and chirimoyas, while potatoes flourish among the bulbous productions of a tropical climate. The people of the town take a pride in its natural beauty; and there are no filthy alleys, no squalid poverty, or uncleanly hovels. Every house appears to be of stone; the walls neatly whitewashed, and bordered with pink, red, blue, green, or yellow; and the streets are fashioned to suit the grounds, without regard to checker-board regularity.
I stood in an upper story of the house of a Mr. Todd, on the opposite side of the little stream that runs in front of the town, and looked out from that favored position. The sun had just escaped from the folds of an imprisoning cloud, and was shining full upon the beautiful town and hill. The unabsorbed moisture on the leaves gave them an additional lustre. The green peering up every where amidst the whitened walls; the graceful form of the trees, where their outline could be traced; the curiously shaped roofs of the old stone churches, with buttresses and towers; the college of San Francisco, a curiously fashioned pile of buildings, standing out above all others; the hill behind the town, the lofty mountain of Perote, on its left flank, on whose top the sky seemed to rest—all combined to give credibility to that which has been said of the beauty of Jalapa by an old Spanish author—that Jalapa was "a piece of heaven let down to earth." This figure was afterward applied to Naples, and the remark was added—"See Naples, and die." But the Jalapanos say, "See Jalapa, and pray for immortality, that you may enjoy it forever." It is the boast of the Indian, that "Jalapa is Paradise."