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Maize, too, covered all the slope down to the mountain-girdled lake, and far, far away on a point of land, like Tyre out in the Mediterranean, the twin towers of the church of Chapala stood out against the dimming lake and the blue-gray range beyond.
We were supplied as rapidly as our men could work at the same price we paid our first subject. Mexico has few large lakes, the largest, Chapala, having an area of only 1,685 square kilometers. Patzcuaro is much smaller, but far more picturesque.
In coming hither we pass through the valley of the Rio Lerma, one of the best developed regions as regards agriculture in the entire republic. The route takes us through some populous towns and many interesting villages, also near to the famous Lake Chapala, the largest body of water in Mexico, sixty miles long and over fifteen in width.
But at least the landlord loaned me a pair of trunks for a moonlight swim in Lake Chapala, whispering some secret to its sandy beaches in the silence of the silver-flooded night. It is the largest lake in Mexico, second indeed only to Titicaca among the lofty sheets of water of the Western world. More than five thousand feet above the sea, it is shallow and stormy as Lake Erie.
From the midst of the great table-land of Anahuac, flows towards the north the river of Santiago, its course exceeding four hundred miles, passing in its way through the large lake of Chapala. Some of these table-lands are even eight thousand feet above the sea. The most lofty is so cold, that during the greater part of the day the thermometer varies between 42 degrees and 46 degrees.
Two leagues off it the peasant pointed out the ridge that hid his casita and his animalitos and his good wife with her broken arm now and regretting that I would not accept his poor hospitality, for I must be tired, he rode away down a little barranca walled by tall bushes with brilliant masses of purple, red, and pink flowers and so on up to the little patch of corn which yes, surely, I could see a corner of it from here, and from it, if only I would come, I should see the broad blue view of Chapala lake, and My road descended and went down into the night, plentifully scattered with loose stones.
Its broad lawn sloped down to the edge of Lake Chapala, lapping at the shores like some smaller ocean; from its verandas spread a view of sixty miles across the Mexican Titicaca, with all vacation sports, a perennial summer without undue heat, and such sunsets as none can describe.
The orange vendors lolling here under the shade of their hats gave the distance to Chapala as fifteen miles, and advised me to hire a horse or take passage in the stage.
Here and there the road passed through an open gate as into a farmyard, though there were no adjoining fences to mark these boundaries of some new hacienda or estate. From the highest point there was a pretty retrospect back on Atequisa and the railroad and the broad valley almost to far-off Guadalajara, and ahead, also still far away, Lake Chapala shimmering in the early sunset.
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