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Few must be the places in the world which, from the picturesque and poetical point of view, surpass in beauty the Valley of Mexico. The varied phenomena, which the seasons of the year there present, powerfully contribute to this.

Some European savants assert that the seasons of the year are, in the intertropical regions, reduced to two, the dry and rainy seasons. In our country this assertion is without foundation. The truth is, that, in those regions, weather variations less sharply determine seasonal changes than in the temperate zones; but, in the Valley of Mexico seasonal changes really take place as shown by the beautiful fresh mornings of its Spring, prodigal in exquisite and varied flowers; the hot days of its rainy Summer, rich in delicious fruits; the warm afternoons of Autumn with its wondrously beautiful drifting clouds, and the cold nights of Winter, with its clear and starry sky.

As the last hours of night shorten in the lovely season of Spring, the deep darkness which envelopes the earth’s surface dissipates little by little and objects become visible as the delicate light of dawn gradually invades the east. The sun’s rays, propagating themselves with a constant undulatory movement, cause successive reflections and refractions, in the atmosphere and clouds, scattering the light in every direction and permitting the distinguishing of objects not yet directly illuminated by that body. If this light, known by the name of diffused or scattered light, did not exist, the shadow cast by a cloud, or by any object whatever, would produce the darkness of night, and—there being no twilight—the sun would appear on the horizon suddenly and in full splendor.

The sweet trills of the goldfinch, the warbling of other birds, the harmonious sound of bells, which announce in the towns the hour of dawn, and the laborer, who betakes himself to the field, with his oxen, to begin his daily labors, mark the moments in which the splendid rays of the sun, which precede the rising of the luminary, diffuse themselves through the transparent fluid of the atmosphere. Before the sun mounts above the horizon the eastern heavens are successively colored with the brilliant tints of red, orange, yellow, green, and purple; the limit of the white light of dawn, extending in the form of an arch through space, rapidly advances toward the zenith, while, at the same time, the upper heavens about that point, gradually acquire the most intense hue of azure.

The crest of the eastern cordillera sharpens and defines itself against a background of rose and gold; the majestic snow caps of Popocatepetl and Iztaccihuatl, which rise as two colossi in order to display the beauties of the sunrise, feebly illuminated on their western flanks by the diffused light, appear as if made of Bohemian crystal. At times a dense column of smoke, rendered visible by the whiteness of dawn, issues from the crater of Popocatepetl, demonstrating the constant activity of this volcano, which retains evidences of tremendous activity.

When the sun, rising above the horizon, pursues its upward march, it presents a beautiful spectacle, difficult of description. Its disc, red and apparently increased in size, on account of atmospheric refraction, presents itself surrounded by a luminous aureole, and gradually diminishes in diameter as it mounts higher. The antecrepuscular curve submerged in the horizon, the west acquires the same succession of tints and the upper part of the sky is colored with a brilliant, most vivid blue.

From that moment the surroundings of the Capital city are most charming. Chapultepec, with its many and limpid springs, its picturesque rock mass, its poetic palace and its dense grove of ancient cypresses, from the branches of which depend masses of gray moss—the honored locks of their hoary age; Tacubaya with its palaces, its parks, and gardens; Mixcoac with its pleasing environs and its lanes of fruit trees; San Angel, Coyoacan, and Tlalpam, with their clear brooks, their gardens, their fields, and their pretty glades, covered with plants, trees, and interlacing climbers.

In all these places one enjoys the intoxicating freshness of the morning, the attractiveness of the fields, the breathing of the fresh air loaded with the perfume of flowers. There swarms of butterflies, with gleaming and brilliant wings, display their beauties and humming-birds, those precious winged gems which, endowed with an extraordinary flight, cleave the air like an exhalation, or, sucking honey from some flower, suspended in space, incessantly beat their wings and expose the green and pearly lustre of their plumage to the reflections of the sun.

South of the capital, the soil differs from that of the places mentioned. There the camelia, the lily, the Bengal-rose, and the other exquisite flowers of careful cultivation are not met; but there, in the chinampas, those artificial islands which have converted swamps into lovely gardens, grow the luxuriant poppy, the purple pink, the elegant dahlia, the perfumed violet, and the fragrant rose of Castile.

The canal which unites the lakes of Texcoco and Xochimilco in the days of Spring is to be seen covered with canoes loaded with flowers and vegetables bound for the city markets; and everyone, who has participated in the Lenten festivities of the Viga, will ever remember, with delight, the animation that constantly reigns in that place, where the common people finds its greatest joy. It may be said that there is the place of the festival of Spring and flowers.

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Summer, in the Valley, as the other seasons of the year, has its especial attractiveness.

The atmospheric strata being unequally expanded by the fierce heat from the earth’s surface, the order or arrangement of the layers in contact with the soil is, so to say, inverted. It is well known that the lower layers of air have the greater density, from the fact that the upper layers weigh down upon them; from the earth’s surface upward there is a gradual decrease in density until the last, the lightest and most subtle, which is called ether. This general law being interfered with by the expansion of the lower layers, refraction of the light rays,—or the deviation which they suffer in passing from one medium into another of differing density—takes place in a manner contrary to that when the atmospheric layers are normally superposed, and the mirage[1] is produced, an optical illusion, which causes us to see objects, below the horizon or in the air, inverted.

In the dry and level stretches in the north of the Valley, one frequently sees the thick vapor stretch itself out over the surface of the ground, and upon it, inverted, are portrayed the mountains with all their irregularities and details, as if reproduced in a limpid mirror of waters.

The mirage is yet more interesting, more wonderful, in the Lake of Texcoco, though the phenomenon is there less frequent. On clear days, from the shore, one sees the full extent of the lake and the tranquillity of its water. Miserable, frail canoes, the form of which has not varied since the days of the conquest, are seen crossing the lake, loaded with grains and vegetables for the Mexican markets. The unsteady and narrow chalupas of the fishermen and flower-dealers rapidly cleave the watery surface and only the creaking of the oars, or the notes of the monotonous songs of the boatmen break the silence of the solitude.

When the temperature of the water of the lake is less than that of the air with which it is in contact, those little crafts suddenly disappear from the surface of the water and are seen, inverted, floating in the air, coursing to the stroke of the oars, through a shifting sea of clouds.