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On the lower levels of the tierra templada where the sugar-cane is cultivated, a costly system of water-supply has been established in the haciendas with the best results. Even in the plains of Mexico and Puebla, the grain-fields are irrigated to some small degree.
Then the mahogany-trees, the chicozapotes, and again in the barrancas the candelabra-like cactuses, and higher up the knotted and majestic live oak. An incessant change of plants, trees, and climate. We had been five hours in the saddle, and had already changed our climate three times; passed from the temperate zone, the tierra templada, into the torrid heat of the tierra muy caliente.
It is an unquestionable fact that the Mexican robbers, whose exploits have become a matter of world-wide notoriety, all belong to the cold region of the plateaus, the tierra fría. Once down in the tierra templada, or the tierra caliente, the temperate or the hot regions, you hear no more of them; or at least this is the case in the parts of Mexico we visited.
He could not bring himself to the sacrilege of attempting to woo her as other women may be wooed. On the third day they had descended as far as the tierra templada, the zona of the table lands and foot hills. The mountains were receding in their rear, but still towered, exhibiting yet impressively their formidable heads. Here they met signs of man.
A gradual and gentle ascent at the end of two hours brought the cavalcade to a halt upon a rugged upland with semi-tropical shrubbery, and here and there larger trees from the tierra templada in the evergreens or madrono. A few low huts and corrals, and a rambling hacienda, were scattered along the crest, and in the midst arose a little votive chapel, flanked by pear-trees.
TIERRA TEMPLADA. the temperate region. TORO, a bull. TORTILLAS, thin cakes made of Indian corn, resembling oat-cakes; see p. 33. TRAPICHE, a sugar-mill. ULEI, see Hule. VAQUERO, cow-herd.
In Tierra Caliente we are struck by the groves of mimosas, liquid amber, palms, and other gigantic plants characteristic of tropical vegetation; and finally, in Tierra Templada, by the enormous haciendas, many of which are of such extent as to be lost to the sight in the horizon with which they blend."
Heller mentions such a teponaztli, which is still preserved among the Indians of Huatusco, an Indian village near Mirador in the tierra templada, where the inhabitants have had their customs comparatively little altered by intercourse with white men. They keep this drum as a sacred instrument, and beat it only at certain times of the year, though they have no reason to give for doing so.
They stand up directly from the plain itself, sometimes with sloping conical sides sometimes in precipitous cliffs. I ride into the plain and survey its features. There is no resemblance to the land I have left the tierra caliente. I am now in the tierra templada. New objects present themselves a new aspect is before, a new atmosphere around me.
The climate of the country is divided by common acceptation into three zones, each of which is well defined: it being hot in the tierra caliente, or hot lands, of the coast; temperate in the tierra templada, or region between three thousand and six thousand feet above the level of the sea; and cold in the tierra fria, or region at an elevation exceeding six thousand feet.
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