NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW.

No. CCLXXXVI.

SEPTEMBER, 1880.

THE RUINS OF CENTRAL AMERICA.

PART I.

VERA CRUZ, April 30, 1880.

A TRAVELER leaves something of himself in every country he visits. The impressions, friendships, adventures of the former time he fancies will be repeated when he revisits the same scenes. He anticipates the pleasure he will have in seizing the hand of a friend, in visiting again some particular site, in finding again some house where once he was received with graceful hospitality. He comes, but a hurricane has thrown everything out of place: that site is now waste and desert, that house a ruin, those friends are dead; time has done its work.

After an absence of twenty-two years, I hasten eagerly to grasp the hands of the friends I had left. For the one who survives, these twenty-two years are but a day. It seems as though it was but yesterday that he left the town, and he fancies that every one knows him, that every one will be rejoiced to welcome him again. But the quarter of a century which he imagines himself to have passed through unscathed has made its mark upon him as upon all.

NOTE.-M. Charnay desires it to be understood that the present narrative makes no pretension to scientific accuracy, and that all his notes are subject to revision and correction in the future. He makes this reservation, in the belief that no definitive opinion can be formed until the results of the expedition have been thoroughly weighed.-THE Editor.

VOL. CXXXI.--NO. 286.

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Though he may be able to recognize one here and one there, he is himself recognized by none. Like another Rip Van Winkle, he appears to awaken from a life-long dream, to find everything around him changed.

So it was with me. I found one of my friends, the oldest of them all, and one whom I did not expect to see again. I had to give my name, for he did not recognize me, and I saw that now I was a stranger. "How is A?" I asked. "He is dead." "And B?" "Dead." There I halted, not daring to pursue my inquiries further. "What! all dead?" "They are all dead."

Such are my impressions on revisiting Vera Cruz, and to me the city is like a tomb.

Yet this little Oriental city, hid away at the farther end of the Gulf of Mexico, is in itself not unattractive. Oriental I call it, for it is of Moorish descent, and its lineage is visible in its cupolas of white, rose-color, and blue, overtopped here and there by Christian spires; in its houses painted bright red, yellow, or blue; in its flat terraces with their pyramidal ornaments. Cities are more enduring than men, and Vera Cruz has become young again, with its dwellings newly painted, its white bell-towers, its enameled cupolas, its new houses and monuments. There is a holiday air about it, and a faint Haussmann breeze has come across the Atlantic. The plaza, which, when last I saw it, was paved with angular stones, covered with filth, and cut up by muddy brooks, is now a delightful square, planted with palms and other trees, robed in verdure, and paved with marble. In the middle we see a handsome fountain, while all around it are fine cafes, stores, the cathedral, the municipal palace, and other structures that vie with one another in giving it a fit surrounding. In the daytime the air is cool in the plaza ; in the evening long lines of promenaders and of pretty Mexican ladies fill the walks. It is like one vast greenhouse.

route.

FROM VERA CRUZ TO THE CITY OF MEXICO.

May 1, 1880.-The train left at 11.30 P. M., and during the night we traversed one of the most picturesque portions of the At daybreak we reached the plateau of Orizaba, and the prospect was delightful. On all sides rose mountains tinged with the brightest colors by the rising sun. The volcano of Orizaba commanded them all with its snowy cone. We sped through coffee-plantations and vast fields of tobacco and bananas. We crossed