the inactivity with which it has so long been reproached. The merchants of Mexico, having constructed at their expense an excellent causeway along the heights of Tiangillo and las Cruzes, which separate the basin of Toluca from that of Mexico, wish the new road of Vera Cruz to pass through Orizaba; while the merchants of Vera Cruz who have country-houses at Xalapa, and who maintain numerous commercial relations with that town, insist that the new carriage road (camino carretero) should go by Perote and Xalapa. After a discussion of several years, the Consulado of Vera Cruz profited by the arrival of the viceroy, Don Josef de Yvirigarras, who declared himself in favour of the road by Xalapa as of the greatest utility, and who gave the direction of it to M. Garcia Conde, an active and intelligent engineer.

The old road from Mexico to Xalapa and Vera Cruz passed along the elevated plains of Apa, without touching the great town of Puebla de los Angeles. The indigenous merchandises and productions were then conveyed from Mexico to Perote and Xalapa, by a very circuitous route. They reckoned by this road, 130 miles from Mexico to Perote, and 220 from Mexico to Vera Cruz. At last a new and very short road was opened by the Venta de Chalco, the small chain of porphyritic mountains of Cordova, Tesmelucos, and Ocotlan. The advantages of these more direct communications between the capital, the city of Puebla, and the fortress of Perote,

will be easily discovered by examining an atlas of New Spain.

The new road from Mexico to Puebla still possesses the inconsiderable difficulty of the passage of the mountains, which separate the basin of Tenochtitlan from that of Cholula. The table-land which extends from the foot of the volcanoes of Mexico to the mountains of Orizaba and the Coffre, is a level plain, covered with sand, fragments of pearled rock, and saline efflorescences. The road from Puebla to Vera Cruz passes through Cocosingo, Acaxete and Perote. We imagine we are travelling over a surface levelled by being long covered with water. When these plains are heated by the solar rays, they exhibit at the height of the passage of Saint Bernard, the same phenomena of suspension and extraordinary refraction, which we generally observe only in the neighbourhood of the

ocean.

To the activity of the Consulado of Vera Cruz we owe not only the undertaking of the road of Perote, which in 1803 cost from six to seven thousand pounds per mile, but also the amelioration of the hospitals, and the construction of a beautiful gyratory light-house, executed at London after the plan of the celebrated astronomer M. Mendoza y Rios. This light-house consists of a very vated tower, placed at the extremity of the castle of San Juan d'Ulua, which, with the lantern, cost nearly, 20,0007. The lamps, with a current of air,

ele

and furnished with reflectors, are fixed on a triangle which turns by means of clock-work; so that the light disappears whenever the machine presents one of its angles to the entry of the port. At my departure from Vera Cruz, the Consulado were occupied with two new projects of equal utility,—the supplying the town with potable water, and the construction of a mole, which, advancing in the form of a pier, may resist the shock of the waves.

The magnificent road constructing from Perote to Vera Cruz will rival those of the Simplon and Mount Cenis. It is broad, solid, and of a very gentle fall. They have not followed the track of the old road, which was narrow and paved with basaltic porphyry, and which appears to have been constructed towards the middle of the eighteenth century. Rapid ascents have been carefully avoided; and the charge which is brought against the engineer, of lengthening the road too much, will be abandoned when wheel carriages shall be substituted for the carriage of goods on the backs of mules. The construction of this road will probably cost more than 600,000l. sterling; but we hope that so beautiful and useful a work will not suffer any interruption. It is an object of the highest importance to those parts of Mexico the most remote from the capital, and from the port of Vera Cruz; for when the road shall be completed, the price of iron, mercury, spirituous liquors, paper, and all the other commodities of Europe,

ROAD FROM MEXICO TO VERA CRUZ. 23

will experience a sensible fall. The Mexican flour, which has hitherto been dearer at the Havannah than the flour of Philadelphia, will be naturally preferred to the latter; the exportation of the sugars and hides of the country will be more considerable; and the transportation of goods on waggons will require a much smaller number of mules and horses than are now employed. These changes will produce a double effect on subsistence; and the scarcities which have hitherto almost periodically desolated Mexico will be more rare ; not only because the consumption of maize will be less, but because the agriculturist, stimulated by the hope of selling his flour at Vera Cruz, will appropriate more of his land to the cultivation of wheat.

During my stay at Xalapa in the month of February 1804, the new road constructed under the direction of Don Garcia Conde, had been commenced on those points which presented the greatest difficulties; namely, the ravine called the Plan del Rio, and the Cuesta del Soldado. It is intended to place columns of porphyry along the road, for the purpose of indicating both the distances and the elevation of the surface above the level of the ocean. These inscriptions, which are no where to be met with in Europe, will be particularly interesting to a traveller who is climbing the eastern ascent of the Cordillera; they will quiet his mind, by announcing to him that he is approaching that fortunate and elevated region, in which the scourge

of the black vomit, or yellow fever, is no longer to be dreaded.

The old road of Xalapa leads from Rinconada eastward, by the old Vera Cruz vulgarly called la Antigua. After passing below this village the river of the same name, 650 feet in breadth, we follow the coast by Punta Gorda and Vergara; or if the tide is high, we take the road of la Manga de Clavo, which does not rejoin the coast till the very port of Vera Cruz. It would be advantageous to construct a bridge over the Rio de la Antigua, near la Ventilla, where the bed of the river is only 350 feet in breadth, by which means the Xalapa road would be shortened more than 18 miles; and without touching old Vera Cruz, it would lead immediately from the Plan del Rio, by the bridge of la Ventilla, Passo de Ovejas, Cienega de Olocuatla, and Loma de San Juan, to Vera Cruz. This change is so much the more desirable, as it is the journey from Encero to the coast which is the most dangerous to the health of the inhabitants of the interior of Mexico, when they descend from the table-land of Perote and the heights of Xalapa.