Cortez fought and Guatamozin lost and died. Still shall I see brown Dolores at the casement standing, and Juanita with the flashing eyes, ride past in her stately carriage on the paseo. I shall listen to the wild music of the trumpet and the kettle-drum in Colima, and the wilder notes of the Aztec band at the foot of the pyramid of Cholula, or stand in breathless silence absorbed in the fiery eloquence which pours like a flood from the lips of Ignacio Altamarino in the Palace of Mexico.
Again shall I descend the defiles of the Cumbres and dash at full speed through the Pass of Chiquihuite, and walk through the damp and dismal dungeons of the Castle of San Juan de Ulloa. Your flower-embowered and blood-stained shores have faded from my sight, but all these things, and a thousand other memories—bright and beautiful in the main, though occasionally tinged with sorrow and with sadness—are mine, and only death can rob me of them.
Land of history, romance, flowers, poetry, and song; land of dark and fearful deeds, violence, wrong and a terrible past; land with a present mixed and clouded, in which
"Men must die, and women must weep,"
to atone for the sins of those who came before them; land with a bright and glorious future, in which all your people,—educated and disenthralled of prejudice and bigotry—shall in truth be "sovereign, free and independent," and white-winged peace and prosperity shall walk hand in hand through all your borders, God bless thee! Adios!
