tropical growths. Travel inland but a few leagues, and you rise to a greater elevation, and find yourself beneath almost Italian skies, and inhaling Italian airs; while all around is a new vegetation, the vine, the olive, the tobacco, the banana, itself, perhaps, the most prolific and nourishing of all plants, and which, on the space where Indian corn would sustain but three lives, will nourish with its free bounty more than fifty. 5. A few miles more, and you stand on that great plateau, elevated, with but little variation, six or seven thousand feet above the level of the sea, and stretching on every side we know not over how many hundred thousands of square miles. There, under the tropics and beneath a tropical sun, is a temperate atmosphere, cool, salubrious, and bracing. There, almost within sight of the deadly miasma of the coast, is a new climate, which deals kindly even with a European constitution. There all the great cereals of the north, the wheat, the barley, the corn, come to their most luxuriant perfection. 6. And so it is literally true, that, traveling a few hundred miles from gulf to ocean, you pass through more climates and see a wider variety of vegetation than if you traversed our whole country from the great lakes in the north to the southernmost cape of Florida. Nay, so striking is this contrast of zones, that in that table-land itself are, it is said, deep valleys, where with one glance the eye may behold, far up, the deep shades of the pine, while below waves the feathery grace of the palm, or where one may walk amid familiar waving grain, and see beneath him, descending in beautiful gradation, the cone, the olive, the sugar-cane, down to the depth where a torrid vine lavishes its full wealth of verdure. - 7. Here, too, is the true Ophir; here the rivers that roll down their yellow sands. For here are the veins of gold that attracted the Spaniard with his fatal greed, and the mines of silver that for three hundred years have been yielding untold treasures, and to-day are as ready as ever to yield untold treasures more. With such germs of wealth hidden in her soil, what was needed to make Mexico one of the master-nations, but men? What to crowd her ports with ships, to make her borders pleasant with the hum of industry and to fill her storehouses with its products, but the same sagacity and energy which have made the sterile hills of New England populous, and which are now transforming the prairies of the West into one broad corn-field? Was it surprising, then, that fifty years ago men were dreaming great things of Mexico? 8. And it will not be denied that into man's estimate of her future some elements of romance entered, to blind their eyes and to distort their judgment. This was the land of Cortez and Montezuma. Here it was that the Spaniard, fresh from the conquest of fair Granada, found in the depths of the new world a barbarian civilization which mocked the pomp and luxury of the Moor. Here, on these plains, beneath these mountains, on the bosom of these tranquil lakes, was transacted that marvelous episode in history, which, on the pages of Prescott, looks like the creation of the fabled genii. Here an aboriginal race rose to more than aboriginal splendor; and here, beneath the conqueror's heel, they sank to unsounded depths of misery and servitude. He must have a prosaic nature to whom the memories and associations of such a land do not come glowing with the warm flush of sentiment and romance. 9. There was much, too, in the long and bitter struggle by which this people were winning their independence, which appealed to the sympathy of men who had just achieved their own freedom. Very likely, as we read now the history of that struggle,-as we see how little of any broad and generous patriotism entered into it, as we mark how every step was stained with blood and darkened by cruel passions, -as we behold, on every field, the selfish ambition of petty men taking the place of the self-devotion of great souls,-it will not look heroic. But it did once. Men saw it from afar off. They beheld in it the ancient conflict between liberty and oppression. It was the time-worn story of men in poverty, of men in exile, of men dying for freedom. 10. Thus, from one cause or another, from reasons of utility or from reasons of sentiment and imagination, it is certain that many cherished the highest hopes for Mexico, and saw before her a long future of prosperity and honor. "It is to Mexico," writes a glowing admirer, "that we turn again with fond delight. We invoke the reader to ponder her present position, her capacity for future greatness, the career she has yet to commence and run. We look toward her, and we see the day-spring of a glorious national existence arising within her bounds." XCIII-A FIGHT WITH A BEAR. DR. KANE. 1. On Saturday, October seventh, we had a lively sensation, as they say in the land of olives and champagne. "Nannook, nannook!"-"A bear, a bear!"-cried Hans and Morton in a breath! 2. To the scandal of our domestic regulations, the guns were all impracticable. While the men were loading and capping anew, I seized my pillow-companion six-shooter, and ran on deck. A medium sized bear, with a four-months' cub, was in active warfare with our dogs. They were hanging on her skirts, and she, with wonderful alertness, was picking out one victim after another, snatching him by the nape of the neck, and flinging him many feet, or rather yards, by a barely perceptible movement of her head. 3. Tudla, our master dog, was already hors du combat; he had been tossed twice. Jenny, just as I emerged from the hatch, was making an extraordinary somerset of some eight fathoms, and alighted senseless. Old Whitey, staunch, but not bear-wise, had been the first in the battle; he was yelping in helplessness on the snow. 4. It seemed as if the controversy was adjourned; and nannook evidently thought so; for she turned off to our beef barrels, and began in the most unconcerned manner, to turn them over and nose out their fatness. She was apparently as devoid of fear as any of the bears in the stories of old Barentz and the Spitzbergen voyagers. 5. I lodged a pistol ball in the side of the cub. At once the mother placed her little one between her hind legs, and shoving it along, made her way behind the beef-house. Mr. Ohlsen wounded her as she went, with my Webster rifle; but she scarcely noticed it. She tore down, by single efforts of her forearms, the barrels of frozen beef which made the triple walls of the storehouse, mounted the rubbish, and, snatching up a half-barrel of herrings, carried it down by her teeth, and was making off. It was time to close, I thought. Going up within half pistol range, I gave her six buckshot. She dropped, but instantly rose, and getting her cub into its former position, moved off once more. 6. This time she would really have escaped but for the admirable tactics of our new recruits from the Esquimaux. The dogs of Smith's Sound are educated more thoroughly than any of their more southern brethren. Next to the walrus, the bear is the staple of diet to the north, and, except the fox, supplies the most important element of the wardrobe. Unlike the dogs we had brought with us from Baffin's Bay, these were trained, not to attack, but to embarrass. 7. They ran in circles round the bear, and when pursued would keep ahead with regulated gait, their comrades effecting a diversion at the critical moment by a nip at her hind quarters. This was done so systematically and with so little seeming excitement, as to strike every one on board. I have seen bear-dogs elsewhere that had been drilled to relieve each other in the melee, and avoid the direct assault; but here, two dogs without even a demonstration of attack, would put themselves before the path of the animal, and, retreating right and left, lead him into a profitless pursuit that checked his advance completely. 8. The poor animal was still backing out, yet still fighting, carrying along her wounded cub, embarrassed by the dogs, yet gaining distance from the brig, when Hans and myself threw in the odds in the shape of a couple of rifle balls. She staggered in front of her young one, faced us in death-like defiance, and only sank when pierced by six more bullets. 9. We found nine balls in skinning her body. She was of medium size, very lean, and without a particle of food in her stomach. Hunger must have caused her boldness. The net weight of the cleansed carcass was three hundred pounds; that of the entire animal six hundred and fifty; her length but seven feet eight inches. 10. Bears in this lean condition are much the most palatable food. The impregnation of fatty oil through the cellular tissue, makes a well-fed bear nearly uneatable. The flesh of a famished beast, although less nutritious as a fuel diet, is rather sweet and tender than otherwise. 11. The little cub is larger than the adjective implies. She was taller than a dog, and weighs one hundred and fourteen pounds. Like Morton's bear in Kennedy's Channel, she |