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I am still in the piedmont lands the tierras calientes. The templadas are yet far higher. I am only a thousand yards or so above sea-level. I am in the "foot-hills" of the Northern Andes. How sudden is this change! It is less than an hour since I parted from the plains below, and yet the surface-aspect around me is like that of another land.
Neither the "teepan-tlalli" nor the "tlatoca-tlalli," still less the "calpulalli," show any trace of individual ownership. It is also called "tlalli," but that is the general name for soil or ground. "Tierras o eredades de particulares, juntas an alguna vega," is called "tlalmilli". This decomposes into "tlalli" soil and "milli."
The ancient range of the buffalo, according to history and tradition, once extended from the Alleghanies to the Rocky Mountains, embracing all that magnificent portion of North America known as the Mississippi valley; from the frozen lakes above to the "Tierras Calientes" of Mexico, far to the south.
Thacker, the United States consul at Buenas Tierras, was not yet drunk. It was only eleven o'clock; and he never arrived at his desired state of beatitude a state wherein he sang ancient maudlin vaudeville songs and pelted his screaming parrot with banana peels until the middle of the afternoon.
It was there, among the sweltering rocks of the Tierras Calientes, that these ungainly cactuses first learned to clothe themselves in prickly mail, to store in their loose tissues an abundant supply of sticky moisture, and to set at defiance the persistent attacks of all external enemies.
The earth has a cultivated aspect an aspect of civilisation: for these high plateaux the tierras templadas are the seat of Mexican civilisation. Here are the towns the great cities, with their rich cathedrals and convents here dwells the bulk of the population. Here are whole villages of such huts, inhabited by the dark-skinned descendants of the ancient Aztecs. Fertile fields are around me.
MY DEAR SIR: I beg permission to inform you that there is in my house as a temporary guest a young man who arrived in Buenas Tierras from the United States some days ago. Without wishing to excite any hopes that may not be realized, I think there is a possibility of his being your long-absent son. It might be well for you to call and see him.
The predilection of Europeans for the tierras frias, that is to say, the cold and temperate climate that prevails on the back of the Andes, gave further weight to these counsels. The distances were known, but we were deceived with respect to the time it would take to traverse them on mules' backs. We did not imagine that it would require more than eighteen months to go from Carthagena to Lima.
If he is, it is my opinion that his intention was to return to his home, but upon arriving here, his courage failed him from doubts as to how he would be received. Your true servant, Half an hour afterward quick time for Buenas Tierras Señor Urique's ancient landau drove to the consul's door, with the barefooted coachman beating and shouting at the team of fat, awkward horses.
"Why, yes," answered the captain, "if you want to call a schooner a ship, and I don't mind lyin'. But you better say Miller and Gonzales, owners, and ordinary plain, Billy-be-damned old Samuel K. Boone, skipper." "Where are you going to?" asked the refugee. "Buenas Tierras, coast of South America I forgot what they called the country the last time I was there.
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