STATISTICAL ́}XI. Intendancy of Durango. 298 from the town of Santa Fe. The height of the town is 2087 metres *. There are frequent falls of snow, and the thermometer (under the 24° 25′) descends to 8°+ below the freezing point. A group of rocks, covered with scoria, called la Breña, rises in the middle of a very level plain between the capital, the plantations del Ojo, and del Chorro, and the small town of Nombre de Dios. This groupe, of a very grotesque form, which is 12 leagues in length from north to south, and six leagues in breadth from east to west, deserves particularly to fix the attention of mineralogists. The rocks, which constitute the Breña, are of basaltic amygdaloid, and appear to have been raised up by volcanic fire. The neighbouring mountains were examined by M. Oteyza, particularly that of the Frayle, near the hacienda de l'Ojo. He found on the summit a crater of nearly 100 metres in circumference, and more than 30 metres of perpendicular depth. In the environs of Durango is also to be found insulated in the plain the enormous mass of malleable iron and nickel, which is of the identical composition of the aerolithos, which fell in 1751 at Hraschina, *6845 feet. Trans. 328 feet. Trans † 14° of Fahr. Trans. STATISTICAL ·} XI. Intendancy of Durango. near Agram in Hungary. Specimens were com. municated to me by the learned director of the Tribunal de Mineria de Mexico, Don Fausto d'Elhuyar, which I deposited in different cabinets of Europe, and of which MM. Vauquelin and Klaproth published an analysis. This mass of Durango is affirmed to weigh upwards of 1900 myriagrammes*, which is 400† more than the aerolithos discovered at Olumpa in the Tucuman by M. Rubin de Celis. A distinguished mineralogist, M. Frederick Sonnenschmidt, who travelled over much more of Mexico than myself, discovered also in 1792, in the interior of the town of Zacatecas, a mass of malleable iron of the weight of 97 myriagrammes §, which in its exterior and physical character was found by him entirely analogous with the malleable iron described by the celebrated Pallas. The popu lation of Durango is 12,000. Chihuahua, the residence of the captain-general of the Provincias internas, surrounded with considerable mines to the east of the great real of Santa Rosa de Cosiguiriachi.Population, 11,600. * 41,933 pounds avoirdupois. Trans. STATISTICAL XI. Intendancy of Durango. ANALYSIS. San Juan del Rio, to the south-west of the lake of Parras. We must not confound this town with the place which bears the same name in the intendancy of Mexico, which is situated to the east of Queretaro.-Population, 10,200. Nombre de Dios, a considerable town on the road from the famous mines of Sombrerete to Durango.-Population, 6,800. Pasquiaro, a small town to the south of the Rio de Nasas. Population, 5,600. Saltillo, on the confines of the province of Cohahuila and the small kingdom of Leon. This town is surrounded with arid plains, in which the traveller suffers very much from want of water. The table-land on which the Saltillo is situated descends towards Monclova, the Rio del Norte, and the province of Texas, where, in place of European corn, we find only fields covered with cactus.-Population, 6,000. Mapimis, with a military post (presidio) to the east of the Cerro de la Cadena, on the uncultivated border, called Bolson de Mapimi.Population, 2,400. Parras, near a lake of the same name, west from Saltillo. A species of wild vine found in this beautiful situation has procured it the name of Parras from the Spaniards. The conquerors transplanted to this place the vitis vinifera of STATISTICAL ANALYSIS. XI. Intendancy of Durango. }XI. Asja; and this branch of industry has succeeded very well, notwithstanding the hatred sworn by the monopolists of Cadiz for centuries to the cultivation of the olive, the vine, and the mul berry, in the provinces of Spanish America. San Pedro de Batopilas, formerly celebrated for the great wealth of its mines, to the west of the Rio de Conchos.-Population, 8,000. San Jose del Parral, the residence of a Diputacion de Minas. This real, as well as the town of Parras, received its name from the great number of wild vine shoots with which the country was covered on the first arrival of the Spaniards. Population, 5,000. Santa Rosa de Cosiguiriachi, surrounded with silver mines, at the foot of the Sierra de los Metates. I have seen a very recent memoir of the intendant of Durango, in which the population of this real was made to amount to 10,700. Guarisamey, very old mines on the road from Durango to Copala.Population, 3,800. THIS intendancy, which is still more thinly peopled than that of Durango, extends along the gulph of California, called also the Sea of Cortez, for more than 280 leagues from the great bay of Bayona, or the Rio del Rosario, to the mouth of the Rio Colorado, formerly called Rio de Balzas, on the banks of which the missionary monks Pedro Nadal and Marcos de Niza made astronomical observations in the 16th century. The breadth of the intendancy is by no means uniform. From the tropic of Cancer to the 27th degree the breadth scarcely exceeds 50 leagues; but farther north, towards the Rio Gila, it increases so considerably, that on the parallel of Arispe it is more than 128 leagues. The intendancy of Sonora comprehends an extent of hilly country of greater surface than the half of France; but its absolute population is not equal to the fourth of the most peopled department of that empire. The intendant who resides in the town of Arispe has the charge, as well as the intendant of San Luis Potosi, of the administration |