Though the Americans charged up the hill and carried it easily in '47, it would be a very strong place in proper hands.

It is a military school now.

On the hill is the famous grove of cypresses--ahuehuetes[5]--as they are called, grand trees with their branches hung with fringes of the long grey Spanish moss--barba Espanola--Spanish beard.

I do not know what painters think of the effect of this moss, trailing in long festoons from the branches of the trees, but to me it is beautiful; and I shall never forget where I first saw it, on a bayou of the Mississippi, winding through the depths of a great forest in the swamps of Louisiana.[6] In this grove of Chapultepec, there were sculptured on the side of the hill, in the solid porphyry, likenesses of the two Montezumas, colossal in size.

For some reason or other, I forget now what, one of the last Spanish viceroys thought it desirable to destroy them, and tried to blow them up with gunpowder.