The top of the pass is 12,000 feet above the sea, but the clouds seemed as high as ever above us, and the swallows were flying far up in the air.  Three thousand feet lower we were in a warmer region, among oaks and arbutus; and here, as in our higher latitudes, the climate is far hotter than on the northern slope at the same height.  Bananas are to be found at an elevation of 9,000 feet, three times the height at which they ceased on the eastern slope, as we came up from Vera Cruz.  This difference between the two slopes depends, in part, on the different quantity of sunshine they receive, which is of some importance, although we are within the tropics.  But the sheltering of the southern sides from the chilling winds from the north still further contributes to give their vegetation a really tropical character.

We felt the heat becoming more and more intense as we descended, and when we reached Cuernavaca we lay down in the beautiful garden of the inn, among orange-trees and cocoanut-palms, listening to the pleasant cool sound of running water, and looking down into the great barranca with its perpendicular walls of rock, and the luxuriant vegetation of the tierra caliente covering the banks of the stream that flowed far below us.  We could easily shout to the people on the other edge of the ravine, but it would have taken hours of toiling down the steep paths and up again before we could have reached them.

Here our horses were waiting for us; and an hour or two’s ride brought us to the great sugar-hacienda of Temisco, where we were to pass the night, for towns and inns are few and far between in Mexico when one leaves the more populous mountain-plateaus.  So much the better, for my companion had provided himself with letters of introduction, and we had already seen something of hacienda life, and liked it.

As we approached Temisco, we saw upon the slopes, immense fields of sugar-cane, now grown into a dense mass, five or six feet high, most pleasant to look upon for the delicate green tint of the leaves that belongs to no other plant.  The colour of our English turf is beautiful, and so are the tints of our English woods in spring, but our fields of grain have a dull and dingy green compared to the sugar-cane and the young Indian corn.  In this beautiful valley we cannot charge the inhabitants with entirely neglecting the irrigation of the land.  Indeed, the culture of the sugar-cane cannot be carried on without it, and the cost of the watercourses on the large estates has been very great.  Unfortunately, even here agriculture is not flourishing.  The small number of the white inhabitants, and the distracted state of the country make both life and property very insecure; and the brown people are becoming less and less disposed to labour on the plantations.

It is true that most of these channels were made in old times; little new is done now, and I could make a long list of estates that were once busy and prosperous, giving employment to thousands of the Indian inhabitants, and that are now over-grown with weeds and falling to ruin.