STATISTICAL III. Intendancy of Guanaxuato. }

ANALYSIS.

and Cuevas, towards Guanaxuato. Height 1757 metres*.

Celaya. Sumptuous edifices have recently been constructed at Celaya, Queretaro, and Guanaxuato. The church of the Carmelites at Celaya has a fine appearance. It is adorned with Corinthian and Ionic columns. Height 1835 metrest.

Villa de Leon, in a plain eminently fertile in grain. From this town to San Juan del Rio are to be seen the finest fields of wheat, barley, and maize.

San Miguel el Grande, celebrated for the industry of its inhabitants, who manufacture cot ton cloth.

The hot wells of San Jose de Comangillas are in this province. They issue from a basaltic opening. The temperature of the water, according to experiments made jointly by myself and M. Roxas, is 96°, 3 of the centigrade thermometert.

5762 feet. Trans.

+6018 feet. Trans.

205°, 3 of Fahrenheit. Trans.

THIS intendancy at the period of the Spanish conquest made a part of the kingdom of Michu acan (Mechoacan), which extended from the Rio de Zacatula to the port de la Natividad, and from the mountains of Xala and Colima to the river of Lerma, and the lake of Chapala. The capital of this kingdom of Michuacan, which, like the re publics of Tlaxcallan, Huexocingo and Cholollan, was always independent of the Mexican empire, was Tzintzontzan, a town situated on the banks of a lake, infinitely picturesque, called the lake of Patzquaro. Tzintzontzan, which the Aztec inhabitants of Tenochtitlan called Huitzitzila, is now only a poor Indian village, though it still preserves the pompous title of city (ciudad).

The intendancy of Valladolid, vulgarly called in the country Michuacan, is bounded on the north by the Rio de Lerma, which farther east takes the name of Rio Grande de Santiago. On the east and north-east it joins the intendancy of Mexico; on the north the intendancy of Gua

STATISTICAL}IV. Intendancy of Valladolid.

naxuato; and on the west that of Guadalaxara. The greatest length of the province of Valladolid from the port of Zacatula to the basaltic mountains of Palangeo, in a direction from S.S.E. to N.N.E. is 78 leagues. It is washed by the South Sea for an extent of coast of more than 38 leagues.

Situated on the western declivity of the cordillera of Anahuac, intersected with hills and charming vallies, which exhibit to the eye of the traveller a very uncommon appearance under the torrid zone, that of extensive and well watered meadows, the province of Valladolid in general enjoys a mild and temperate climate, exceedingly conducive to the health of the inhabitants. It is only when we descend the table-land of Ario and approach the coast that we find a climate in which the new colonists, and frequently even the indigenous, are subject to the scourge of intermittent and putrid fevers.

The most elevated summit of the intendancy of Valladolid is the Pic de Tancitaro, to the east of Tuspan. I never could see it near enough to take an exact measurement of it; but there is no doubt that it is higher than the Volcan de Colina, and that it is more frequently covered with snow. To the east of the Pic de Tancitaro the Volcan de Jorullo (Xorullo, or Juruyo) was formed in the

STATISTICAL IV. Intendancy of Valladolid.

ANALYSIS.

night of the 29th September, 1759, of which we have already spoken*. M. Bonpland and myself reached its crater on the 19th September, 1803. The great catastrophe in which this mountain rose from the earth, and by which a considerable extent of ground totally changed its appearance, is, perhaps, one of the most extraordinary physical revolutions in the annals of the history of our planetf. Geology points out the parts of the ocean, where, at recent epoquas within the last two thousand years, near the Azores, in the Egean sea, and to the south of

* Chap. iii. and Geographie des Plantes, page 130. The heights now indicated by me are founded on the barometrical formula of M. Laplace. They are the result of the latest operation of M. Oltmanns; and sometimes differ 20 or 30 metres from what is assigned in the Geographie des Plantes, composed shortly after my return to Europe, when it was impossible to give to such a great number of calculations all the precision of which they are susceptible. (See Note written in the month of Nivôse, year 13, at the end of the Geography of Plants, p. 147.)

+ Strabo relates (ed. Alm. tom. i. p. 102.) that in the plains in the neighbourhood of Methone, on the banks of the Gulph of Hermione, a volcanic explosion produced a mountain of scoria (a monte novo), to which he attributes the enormous height of seven stadia; which, on the supposition of the Olympic stadia (Voyage de Nearque, par M. Vincent, p. 56.) would be 1249 metres! (4096 feet English.) However exaggerated this assertion may be, the geological fact undoubt edly merits the attention of travellers.

STATISTICAL

ANALYSIS. IV. Intendancy of Valladolid.
}

Iceland, sinall volcanic islands have risen above the surface of the water; but it gives us no example of the formation, from the centre of a thousand small burning cones, of a mountain of scoria and ashes 517 metres in height, comparing it only with the level of the old adjoining plains in the interior of a continent 36 leagues distant from the coast, and more than 42 leagues from every other active volcano. This remarkable phenomenon was sung in hexameter verses by the Jesuit Father Raphael Landivar, a native of Guatimala. It is mentioned by the Abbe Clavigero in the ancient history of his country; and yet it has remained unknown to the mineralogists and naturalists of Europe, though it took place not more than fifty years ago, and within six days' journey of the capital of Mexico, descending from the central table-land towards the shores of the South Sea.

A vast plain extends from the hills of Aguasarco to near the villages of Teipa and Petatlan, both equally celebrated for their fine plantations of cotton. This plain, between the Picachos del Mortero, the Cerros de las Cuevas, y de Cuiche,

1695 feet. Trans.

+ Storia antica di Messico, vol. i. p. 42. and Rusticorio Mexicana (the poem of Father Landivar, of which the se cond edition appeared at Bologna in 1782), p. 17.