when I visited the famous Yosemite it was considered one of the world's wonders, but here we have it duplicated but many times longer and with a railroad running the whole length. Along the stream we could see the natives rocking gold out of the yellow sands. The magnificent valley of Oaxaca was granted to Cortez and from it he derived his title of Marquis of the Valley. In the city of Oaxaca President Diaz was born (which fact is marked in European fashion by a plaque on the walls of the house) and Juarez was born in a little Indian village close by. The city is the capital of the state of the same name and has its fair share of grand churches and handsome public buildings with its Plazas and a Zocalo. It has a population of thirty thousand. The railroad descends from seven thousand feet at Puebla to five thousand feet here.

From Oaxaca it is usual to go out by stage to the wonderful ruins of Mitla, twenty-five miles off, but as there was no one else to go that day, I went on horseback accompanied only by an Indian mozo or servant. It was a delightful bracing ride in this elevated atmosphere, albeit the sun was rather trying for January, seeing that we were within seventeen degrees of the equator, about the latitude of Khartoom, Aden, and Bombay, and some hundreds of miles further south than Cairo (in Egypt), Delhi, or Calcutta. A few miles out, we stopped to see the big tree of Tule. While not so tall as the big trees in the Mariposa or Calaveras groves in California (though some one has said it took two looks to see to the top) it is larger round, and in fact is probably the largest tree in the world, being one hundred and fifty-five feet in circumference, measured at a height of six feet from the ground. It stands in the churchyard of Santa Maria del Tule. On the east side of the tree is a wooden tablet signed by Humboldt in 1806 which is now partly overgrown and imbedded in the tree. Stopping at Tlacolula for dinner and at other villages to rest and see the customs and novelties of this far-off country, Mitla was reached early enough to see the wonderful and mysterious prehistoric ruins before sunset, for towards the equator winter days are longer and summer days shorter than with us. No one knows when and by whom these solid granite buildings with such elaborate carvings were erected. In the entablature are chiselled hieroglyphics which might tell the story, but as at Belshaz zar's feast no one has been prompt to decipher them, and the mystery remains unsolved. No bilingual tablet has been discovered, and the "dead past has gone down to the

dead." The mountains and the valley and the sky are still here, as beautiful and as smiling as on that far-away day when these buildings came forth fresh from the hands of the builders. What glorious name were they intended to hand down to future ages, what great deeds to commemorate? Earth and sky make no reply, and the breeze gently blowing passes by and no man knows whence it came or whither it goes.

At night, the glorious stars are glorious indeed in the translucent air of these cloudless skies. Larger and brighter, apparently nearer and more numerous than at home, we see among them new constellations. Far to the north is still the pole-star and a part of the Great Bear, while to the southward shines the Southern Cross. Here, as in crossing the Andes, it is said that those travelling by night will hear the Indian guides cry out at midnight, "The cross begins to bend." And at sunrise and sunset what coloring in the sky and on the lonely mountain tops,—

"Hues that have words

And speak to ye of Heaven."

Returning to Puebla, a short run on the railroad brings us to the station of Santa Ana, whence a tramway of six miles through beautiful woods, well-cultivated fields (the hedges on either side of the road covered with wild flowers filling the air with perfume), and through the quaint little town of Pablo Apetitlan brings us to Tlaxcala. This is one of the most interesting places in Mexico, and its very name is redolent of antiquity and the conquest. Cortez met in battle an army of a hundred thousand warriors of this brave little republic, and then deeming it better to make friends, marched with them to Cholula which he turned over to their uncovenanted mercies. It was only by the aid of the Tlascalans that he conquered Mexico. Then they in turn fell into subjection, and its three hundred thousand inhabitants have now dwindled to four thousand. Here is a museum of interesting antiquities, and the oldest church on the continent, begun in 1521, the very year of the conquest, and the pulpit in which the gospel was first preached this side of the great waters. Here too are the state buildings, and the governor and the supreme court were seen, for in deference to its history Tlaxcala is the capital of a state of that name, though the smallest in the republic, having only fifteen hundred square miles, somewhat larger than Rhode Island but smaller than Delaware. The population of the little state is one hundred and fifty thousand.

The ancient town was built in an amphitheatre in the foothills. The present town is not exactly on the old site.

Returning again to Puebla, the route then leads us back to the city of Mexico over the Interoceanic Railroad, through one of the richest and most highly cultivated sections in all Mexico. At Nanacamilca the track reaches an elevation of nine thousand feet. At Calpulalpan and at Otumba we pass through two famous battlefields. A little further on we have one of the best views of the valley of Mexico. Far and near are the gleaming roofs of busy towns, the green groves of olives and other trees, and amid apparently fathomless depths of air sleeps the great lake. Here the railroad turning almost back on its track but on the other side of the mountain range, we roll southwards past Texcoco, once the rival of Mexico and the place at which Cortez launched his bergantines for the taking of the latter city, along the eastern side of Lake Texcoco, then turning west we pass through the valley with Lake Texcoco on the right and Lakes Xochomilco and Chalco on the left, then along the Viga canal with its boats, then under a double row of willows lining the tracks, with Chapultepec to the left looking down upon us and the mountains all around, and halt at San Lazaro station in the city of Mexico. As in Italy all roads lead to Rome, so in Mexico all roads lead to the capital.

WHAT IS AMERICA'S RELATION TO ENGLAND?

BY EVELEEN LAURA MASON.

The war before us is but a call to arms for brains and for straight shooting at facts. The time for ambush fighting, even between intellects, is over. For "a conspiracy of silence" concerning antagonisms never creates peace.

It is interesting that while Britain has aroused from self-satisfaction sufficiently to see that she has made herself disagreeable to America and the rest of the world, she yet tries to persuade herself that America's antipathy is only based (as some writers for the British cause suggest) on "the policies of government for which England stands," "free trade" and the "gold standard." The British do not seem to know that on these points the conglomerate American mind takes different individual views, and that the antipathy is based on the difference between the principles for which America stands and the conduct of England. And this difference is, that America stands for the principle, "Liberty to all and license to none"; while England's practice is "Liberty to none and license to England." Therefore the relation is, in the nature of things, as antipathetic as peace and war, heaven and hell!

When using the name of the chosen symbol of the British in speaking of their chosen policy, we leave out of the discussion those individuals whose intelligence has outgrown the symbol and the policy. And when we speak of the Goddess of Liberty, we do it, realizing that not all Americans are yet imbued with the power to practise that "Liberty to all and license to none" which we theoretically delight to honor. Yet we must continue to lay stress on the names of "goddess" and "lion," because we know that a people's ideals are to them wings or weights. And we claim that our national ideals of personal liberty and selfsovereignty are as the wings on which people will mount to moral heights as yet unattained by any of us, while the polity symbolized by the lion is a weight, pressing its adherents to a plane of violence and stupidity.

But the stolid inability of the lion to understand these facts constrains the goddess to emphasize her wish that he would understand, and puts her in no frame of mind to say to him, "Roar me gently, good beast." On the reverse, its intrusions oblige the goddess to reaffirm, "America's relation to England is that of a conqueror to a foe vanquished in 1776, and with whom America will have no entangling alliance, and as little traffic until the lion is transhumanized."

Meanwhile, as distance gives perspective, it is probable that the goddess knows England better than England knows herself, for she stands too admiringly near to herself to get right perspective of her past history and present intentions. She does not realize that America is a great reader, and that, as her citizenship is conglomerate, her language is polyglot, which puts her in the way of knowing past and present, with the result that, "in all the affliction of" the nations on whom British violence, rapine, and slaughter have fallen, America "has been afflicted." For America is the nations of the earth, and the nations are America. America, not England, is the motherland; for the maternal principle of "Liberty to all and license to none" is the Comforter come to lead our citizenship into all knowledge through peace. It is not good form for the lion to intrude his old-fashioned bloodthirsty ways on America! He should be restrained and made to see that the goddess is beautifully busy, and cannot turn from her business of bringing her men and women into right relations with one another for the full practicalization of her principles; but that meanwhile, it would be right in the line of evolution for England to stay at home and teach her lion to change his methods, and to climb up from brute to human, and from human to the divine level where stands the goddess whose principles we emulate.

True, in the course of the evolution of each succeeding world-epoch wars have been. For in every immature age the common majority of men have been fighters, not thinkers, and so seem to have been weights on progress. But always these fighting methods have been antipathetic to the principles of goddess and eagle, both of which are very old ensigns of the supreme principles which America has set herself to demonstrate in popular practice.

England does not want to hear that America's great concern is to sustain right relations with her own principles whatever becomes incidentally of England, whose plans have no more bearing on the question than have the plans