Potosi; but they belong directly to the comandancia general de Chihuahua. The following tables will throw some light on these very complicated territorial divisions. Let us divide all New Spain into A. Provincias sujetas al Virey de Nueva España; 531,927 square miles, with 5,477,900 souls: the ten intendancies of Mexico, Puebla, Vera Cruz, Oaxaca, Merida, Valladolid, Guadalaxara, Zacatecas, Guanaxuato, and San Luis Potosi (without including Cohahuila and Texas). The two Californias. B. Provincias sujetas al Comandante general de provincias internas, 534,375 square miles, with 359,200 inhabitants : The two intendancies of Durango and Sonora ; Cohahuila and Texas. The whole of New Spain, 1,066,302 square miles, with 5,837,100 inhabitants. We have given this brief outline of the territorial divisions of the whole of this vast empire: but as it forms no part of our purpose to extend the views of our readers beyond those intendancies which are the seat of the great mining operations, we shall, in the more detailed description which follows, confine ourselves principally within the intendancies of Guanaxuato, Mexico, Zacatecas, San Luis ASPECT OF THE COUNTRY. Potosi, Valladolid, and Guadalaxara. 11 The only instance in which we shall exceed this boundary, is in that of Vera Cruz, which is interesting as the province through which all the riches of the interior pass to Europe. The chain of mountains which form the vast table-land of Mexico, is the same with that which, under the name of the Andes, runs throughall South America; but the construction, I may say the skeleton (charpente), of this chain varies to the south and north of the equator. In the southern hemisphere, the Cordillera is every where torn and interrupted by fissures, like open furrows not filled with heterogeneous substances. If there are plains elevated from 10,000 to 12,000 feet, as in the kingdom of Quito, and further north in the province of los Pastos, they are not to be compared in extent with those of New Spain, and are rather to be considered as longitudinal valleys bounded by two branches of the great Cordillera of the Andes: while in Mexico it is the very ridge of the mountains which forms the table-land; and it is the direction of this plain which designates, as it were, that of the whole chain. Peru and the kingdom of New Grenada contain transversal valleys, of which the perpendicular depth is sometimes near 5,000 feet. The existence of these valleys prevents the inhabitants from travelling except on horseback, a-foot, or carried on the shoulders of Indians (called cargadores); but in the kingdom of New Spain carriages roll on to Santa Fe in the province of New Mexico, for a length of more than 1,500 miles. On the whole of this road there were few difficulties for art to surmount. The table-land of Mexico is in general so little interrupted by valleys, and its declivity is so gentle, that as far as the city of Durango, in New Biscay, 420 miles from Mexico, the surface is continually elevated from 5,600 to 8,900 feet above the level of the neighbouring ocean. This is equal to the height of Mount Cenis, St. Gothard, or the Great St. Bernard. A remarkable advantage for the progress of national industry arises from the height at which nature, in New Spain, has deposited the precious metals. In Peru the most considerable silver mines, those of Potosi, Pasco, and Chota, are inmensely elevated, and border upon the region of perpetual snow. In working them, men, provisions, and cattle, must all be brought from a distance. Cities situated in plains, where water freezes the whole year round, and where trees never vegetate, can hardly be an attractive abode. Nothing can determine a freeman to abandon the delicious climate of the valleys to insulate himself on the top of the Andes, except the hope of amassing wealth. But in Mexico, the richest veins of silver, those of Guanaxuato, Zacatecas, Tasco, and Real del Monte, are at moderate elevations of from 5,000 to 6,000 feet. The mines are surrounded with cultivated fields, towns, and villages; the neighbouring sum POSITION OF MINING DISTRICTS. 13 mits are crowned with forests; and every thing facilitates the acquisition of this subterraneous wealth. None of the plains of New Grenada, Quito, or Peru exceed 360 square miles. Of difficult access, and separated from one another by deep valleys, they are very unfavourable for the transport of goods and internal commerce. Crowning insulated summits, they appear like islands in the middle of the aërial ocean. Those who inhabit these frozen plains remain fixed there, and dread to descend into the neighbouring regions, where a suffocating heat prevails, prejudicial to the primitive inhabitants of the higher Andes. In Mexico, however, the soil assumes a different aspect. Table-lands of a great extent, but of a surface no less uniform, are so approximated to one another, that they form but a single plain on the lengthened ridge of the Cordillera: such is the table-land which runs from 18° to 40° of north latitude. Its length is equal to the distance from Lyons to the tropic of Cancer, which traverses the great African desert. This extraordinary plain appears to decline insensibly towards the north. Further to the north of the parallel of 19°, near the celebrated mines of Zimapan and the Doctor, situated in the intendancy of Mexico, the Cordillera takes the name of Sierra Madre; and then leaving the eastern part of the kingdom it runs to the north-west, towards the cities of San Miguel el Grande and Guanaxuato. To the north of this It last city, considered the Potosi of Mexico, the Sierra Madre becomes of an extraordinary breadth. divides immediately into three branches, of which the most eastern runs in the direction of Charcas and the Real de Catorce, and loses itself in the new kingdom of Leon. In travelling from the capital of Mexico to the great mines of Guanaxuato, we remain at first for 30 miles in the valley of Tenochtitlan, elevated 7,500 feet above the level of the sea. The level of this beautiful valley is so uniform, that the village of Gueguetoque, situated at the foot of the mountain of Sincoque, is only 32 feet higher than Mexico. The hill of Barientos is merely a promontory which stretches into the valley. From Gueguetoque we ascend near Botas to Puerto de los Reyes, and from thence descend into the valley of Tula, which is 380 feet lower than the valley of Tenochtitlan, and across which the great canal of evacuation of the lakes San Christoval and Zumpango passes to the Rio de Moctezuma and the Gulf of Mexico. To arrive at the bottom of the valley of Tula, in the great plain of Queretaro, we must pass the mountain of Calpulaipan, which is scarcely 9000 feet above the level of the sea, and is consequently less elevated than the city of Quito, though it appears the highest point of the whole road from Mexico to Chihuahua. To the north of this mountainous country begin the vast plains of S. Juan del Rio, Queretaro, and Zelya, plains covered with villages and con |