THE BOY'S FRIEND.

ADVENTURES IN SOUTHERN MEXICO.

BY CAPTAIN MAYNE REID.

CHAPTER I.

THE LAND OF ANAHUAC.

AWAY over the dark, wild waves of the rolling Atlantic-away beyond the summ islands of the western Ind-lies a lovely land. Its surface aspect carrie the hue of the emerald; its sky is sapphire; its sun is a globe of gold. It is ie land of Anahuac.

Th tourist turns his face to the Orient-the poet sings the gone glories of Gree-the painter elaborates the hackneyed pictures of Appenine and Alpthe ovelist turns the skulking thief of Italy into a picturesque bandit, or, Don Quote-like, betaking himself into the misty middle age, entertains the rorintic miss and milliner's apprentice with stories of raven steeds, of plumed an impossible heroes. All-painter, poet, tourist, and novelist-in search of th bright and beautiful, the poetic and the picturesque-turn their backs urn this lovely land.

hall we? No! Westward, like the Genoese, we boldly venture-over the dik wild waves of the rolling Atlantic; through among the sunny islands of Il-westward to the land of Anahuac. Let us debark upon its shores; let us perce the secret depths of its forests; let us climb its mighty mountains, and averse its table-plains.

Go with us, tourist! Fear not. You shall look upon scenes grand and loomy, bright and beautiful. Poet! you shall find themes for poesy worthy ts loftiest strains. Painter for you there are pictures fresh from the hand of God. Writer! there are stories still untold by the author-artist-legends of love and hate, of gratitude and revenge, of falsehood and devotion, of noble virtue and ignoble crime-legends redolent of romance, rich in reality.

Thither we steer over the dark wild waves of the rolling Atlantic; through the summer islands of the Western Ind; onward, onward to the shores of Anahuac!

Varied is the aspect of that picture land, abounding in scenes that change like the tints of the opal. Varied is the surface which these pictures adorn. Valleys that open deep into the earth; mountains that lead the eye far up into heaven; plains that stretch to the horizon's verge, until the rim of the blue canopy seems to rest upon their limitless level; "rolling" landscapes, whose softly-turned ridges remind one of the wavy billows of the ocean.

VOL. III.

B

Alas! word-painting can give but a faint idea of these scenes. The pen can but feebly pourtray the grand and sublime effect produced upon the mind of him who gazes down into the deep valleys, or glances upward to the mighty mountains of Mexico.

Though feeble be the effort, I shall atempt a series of sketches from memory. They are the panoramic views that present themselves during a single" jornada.' I stand upon the shores of the Mexican Gulf. The waves lip gently up to my feet upon a beach of silvery sand. The water is pure and translucent, of azure blue, here and there crested with the pearly froth of coral breakers. I look to the eastward, and behold a summer sea that seems to invite navigation. But where are the messengers of commerce with their white wings The solitary skiff of the savage "pescador" is making its way through the surf; a lone "polacca" beats up the coast with its half-smuggler crew; a “piraua swings at anchor in a neighbouring cove: this is all! Far as the eye or glas can reach, no other sail is in sight. The beautiful sea before me is ahost unfurrowed by the keels of commerce.

From this I draw ideas of the land and its inhabitants-unfavourable ieas of their moral and material condition. No commerce-no industry-no pisperity. Stay! What see I yonder? Perhaps I have been wron ging themA dark, tower-like object looms up against the horizon. It is the smoke oa steamer-sign of advanced civilization-emblem of active life. She nears te shore. Ha! a foreign flag-the flag of another land trails over her taffrail; foreign flag floats at her peak; foreign faces appear above her bulwarks, an foreign words issue from the lips of her commander. She is not of the land My first conjecture was right..

he makes for the principal port. She lands a small parcel of letters and papers, a few bales of merchandize, half a dozen slightly-formed cadaverous men; and then, putting about, a gun is fired, and she is off again. She soon disappears away upon the wide ocean; and the waves once more roll silently in-their glistening surface broken only by the flapping of the albatross, or the plunge of the osprey.

I direct my eyes northward. I behold a belt of white sand skirting the blue water. I turn towards the south, and in this direction perceive a similar belt. To both points it extends beyond the reach of vision-hundreds of miles beyond-forming, like a ribbon of silver, the selvage of the Mexican Sea. It separates the turquoise blue of the water from the emerald green of the forest, contrasting with each by its dazzling whiteness. Its surface is far from being level, as is usual with the ocean-strand. On the contrary its millions of sparkling atoms, rendered light by the burning sun of the tropic, have been lifted on the wings of the wind, and thrown into hills and ridges hundreds of feet in height, and trending in every direction like the wreaths of a great' snow-drift. I advance with difficulty over these naked ridges, where no vegetation finds nourishment in the inorganic heap. I drag myself wearily along, siuking deeply at every step. I cumb sand-bills of strange and fantastic shapes, cones, and domes, and roof-like ridges, where the sportive wind seems to have played with the plastic mass as children with potter's clay. I encounter huge basins, like the craters of volcanoes, formed by the circling swirl; deep chasms and valleys, whose sides are walls of sand, steep, often vertical, and not unfrequently impending with comb like escarpments.

All these features may be changed in a single night by the magical breath of the "norther." The hill to-day may become the valley to-morrow, and the elevated ridge have given place to the sunken chasm.

Upon the summits of these sand-heights I am fanned by the cool breeze from the Gulf. I descend into the sheltered gorges, and am burned by a

tropic sun, whose beams, reflected from a thousand crystals, torture my eyes and brain. In these parts the traveller is often the victim of the coup-de-soleil.

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Yonder comes the "norte !" Along the northern horizon the sky suddenly changes from light blue to a dark lead colour. Sometimes rumbling thunder, with arrowy lightning. portends the change; but if neither seen nor heard, it is soon felt. The hot atmosphere, that but a moment before encased me in its glowing embrace is suddenly pierced by a chill breeze, that causes my skin to creep and my frame to shiver. In its icy breath there is fever-there is death, for it carries on its wing the dreaded "vomito." The breeze becomes a strong wind a tempest. The sand is lifted upwards, and floats through the air in dun clouds, bere settling down and there rising up again. I dare not face it, any more than I would the blast of the simoon. I should be blinded if I did, or blistered by the "scud" of the angular atoms. The "norther" continues for hours, sometimes for days. It departs as suddenly as it came, carrying its baneful influence to lands farther south.

It is passed, and the sand-hills have assumed a different shape. The ridges trend differently. Some have disappeared, and valleys yawn open where they stood! Such are the shores of Anahuac-the shores of the Mexican Sea. Without commerce-almost harbourless-a waste of sand; but a waste of striking appearance and picturesque beauty.

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To horse and inwards! Adieu to the bright blue waters of the Gulf!

We have crossed the sand-ridges of the coast, and are riding through the shadowy aisles of the forest.

It is a tropical forest. The outlines of the leaves. their breadth, their glowing colours, all reveal this. The eye roams with delight over a frondage that partakes equally of the gold and the green. It revels along waxen leaves, as those of the magnolia, the plantain, and the banana. It is led upward by the rounded trunks of the palins. that like columns appear to support the leafy canopy above. It penetrates the network of vines, or follows the diagonal direction of gigantic lianas, that creep like monster serpents from tree to tree. It gazes with pleased wonder upon the huge bamboo briers and tree-ferns. Wherever it turns, flowers open their corollas to meet its delighted glancetropical tree-flowers, blossoms of the scarlet vine, and trumpet-shaped tubes of the bignonia.

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I turn my eyes to every side, and gaze upon a flora to me strange and interesting. I behold the tall stems of the palma real rising one hundred feet without leaf or branch, and supporting a parachute of feathery fronds that wave to the slightest impulse of the breeze. Beside it I see its constant companion, the Indian cane a small palm-tree, whose slender trunk and low stature contrast oddly with the colossal proportions of its lordly protector. I behold the corozo,"-of the same genus with the palma real-its light feathery frondage streaming outwards and bending downwards, as if to protect from the hot sun the globe-shaped nuts that hang in grape-like- clusters beneath. I see the "abanico," with its enormous fan-shaped leaves; the waxpalm distilling its resinous gum; and the acrocomia with its thorny trunk and enormous racemes of golden fruits. By the side of the stream I guide my horse among the columnar stems of the noble coeva which has been enthusiastically but appropriately termed the "bread of life" (pan de vida).

I gaze with wonder upon the ferns, those strange creatures of the vegetable world, that upon the hill sides of my own far island-home scarce reach the knee in height. Here they are arborescent-tree-ferns-rivalling their cousins the palms in stature, and like them, with their tall straight stems and lobed leaves, contributing to the picturesqueness of the landscape. I admire the beautiful mammey with its great oval fruit and saffron pulp. I ride under the spreading,

limbs of the mahogany-tree, marking its oval pinnate leaves, and the egg-like seed capsules that hang from its branches; thinking as well of the brilliant surfaces that lie concealed within its dark and knotty trunk. Onward I ride, through glistening foliage and glowing flowers, that, under the beams of a tropic sun, present the varying hues of the rainbow.

There is no wind-scarcely a breath stirring; yet here and there the leaves are in motion. The wings of bright birds flash before the eye, passing from tree to tree. The gaudy tanagers, that cannot be tamed-the noisy lories, the resplendent trogons, the toucans with their huge clumsy bills, and the tiny beebirds (the trochili and colibri)—all glance through the sunny vistas.

The carpenter-bird-the great woodpecker-hangs against the decayed trunk of some dead tree, beating the hollow bark, and now and then sounding his clarion note, which is heard to the distance of a mile. Out of the underwood springs the crested curassow; or, basking in the sun-lit glades, with outspread wings gleaming with metallic lustre, may be seen the beautiful turkey of Honduras.

The graceful roe (cervus Mexicanus) bounds forward, startled by the tread of the advancing horse. The caiman crawls lazily along the bank, or hides his hideous body under the water of a sluggish stream; and the not less hideous form of the iguana, recognized by its serrated_crest, is seen crawling up the tree-trunk or lying along the slope of a lliana. The green lizard scuttles along the path-the basilisk looks with glistening eyes from the dark interstices of some corrugated vine—the biting geckotin glides among the dry leaves in pursuit of its insect prey-and the chamelion advances sluggishly along the branches, while it assumes their colour to deceive its victims.

Serpent forms present themselves. Now and then the huge boar and the macaurel twining the trees. The great tiger-snake is seen with his head raised half a yard from the surface; the cascabel, too, coiled like a cable; and the coral-snake with his red and ringed body stretched at full length along the ground. The two last, though inferior in size to the boas, are more to be dreaded; and my horse springs back when he sees the one glistening through the grass, or hears the "skir-r-r-r" of the other threatening to strike.

Quadrupeds and quadrumana appear. The red monkey (mono colorado) runs at the traveller's approach, and flinging himself from limb to limb, hides: among the vines and Tillandsia on the high tree-tops; and the tiny ouistiti, with its pretty, childlike countenance, peers innocently through the leaves; while the ferocious zambo fills the woods with its hideous, half-human voice. The jaguar is not far distant, "laired in the secret depths of the impenetrable jungle. His activity is nocturnal, and his beautiful body may not be seen except by the silver light of the moon. Roused by accident, or pressed by the dogs of the hunter, he may cross my path. So, too, may the ocelot and the lynx; or as I ride silently on I may chance to view the long, tawny form of the Mexican lion, crouched upon a horizontal limb, and watching for the timid stag that must pass beneath. I turn prudently aside and leave him to his hungry vigil.

Night brings a change. The beautiful birds-the parrots, the toucans, and the trogons-all go to rest at an early hour, and other winged creatures take possession of the air. Some need not fear the darkness, for their very life is light. Such are the "cockuyos" whose brilliant lamps of green, and gold, and flame, gleam through the aisles of the forest, until the air seems on fire. Such, too, are the "gusanitos," the female of which a wingless insect, like a glow-worm-lies along the leaf, while her mate whirs gaily around, shedding his most captivating gleams as he woos her upon the wing. But though light is the life of these beautiful creatures, it is often the cause of their death. It guides their enemies the night-hawk and the "whippoor-will," the bat and the owl. Of these last, the hideous vampire may be