STATISTICAL XIII. Province of Nuevo Mexico.

Santa Fe, the capital, to the east of the great Rio del Norte.-Population, 3,600.

Albuquerque, opposite the village of Atrisco, to the west of the Sierra Obscura.—Population, 6,000.

Taos, placed in the old maps 62 leagues too far north under the 40° of latitude.-Population, 8,900.

Passo del Norte, presidio or military post on the right bank of the Rio del Norte, separated from the town of Santa Fe by an uncultivated country of more than 60 leagues in length. We must not confound this place, which some manuscript maps in the archives of Mexico consider as a dependance of New Biscay, with the Presidio del Norte, or de las Juntas, situated further to the south, at the mouth of the Rio Conchos. Travellers stop at the Passo del Norte to lay in the necessary provisions for continuing their route to Santa Fe. The environs of the Passo are delicious, and resemble the finest parts of Andalusia. The fields are cultivated with maize and wheat; and the vineyards produce such excellent sweet wines that they are even preferred to the wines of Parras in New Biscay. The gardens contain in abundance all the fruits of Europe, figs, peaches, apples, and pears. As the country is very dry, a canal of irrigation

STATISTICALXIII. Province of Nuevo Mexico,

brings the water of the Rio del Norte to the Passo. It is with difficulty that the inhabitants of the presidio can keep up the dam, which force's the waters of the rivers when they are very low to enter into the canal (azequia). During the great swells of the Rio del Norte, the strength of the current destroys this dam almost every year in the months of May and June. The manner of restoring and strengthening the dam is very ingenious. The inhabitants form baskets of stakes, connected together by branches of trees, and filled with earth and stones. These gabions (cestones) are abandoned to the force of the current, which in its eddies disposes them in the point where the canal separates from the river.

THE history of geography affords several examples of countries of which the position was known to the first navigators, but which were long regarded as having only been discovered at more recent epoquas. Such are the Sandwich Islands, the west coast of New Holland, the great Cyclades, formerly called by Quiros the Archipelago del Espiritu Santo, the land of the Arsacides seen by Mendaña, and particularly the coast of California. This last country was recognized as a peninsula before the year 1541; and yet 160 years later the merit was attributed to Father Kühn (Kino) of having first proved that California was not an island, and that it was connected with the main land of Mexico.

Cortez, after astonishing the world with his exploits on the continent, displayed an energy of character no less admirable in his maritime undertakings. Restless, ambitious, and tormented with the idea of seeing the country which his courage had conquered at one time under the administration of a corregidor of Toledo, and at another, of

STATISTICAL XIV. Province of Old California.

ANALYSIS.

a president of the audiencia, or a bishop of St. Domingo, he gave himself completely up to expeditions of discovery in the South Sea. He seemed to forget that the powerful enemies which he had at court were merely stirred up by the magnitude and rapidity of his successes, and he flattered himself that he would compel them to silence by the brilliancy of the new career which opened to his activity. On the other hand, the government, which distrusted a man of such extraordinary merit, encouraged him in his design of traversing the ocean. Believing that after the conquest of Mexico his military talents were no longer needed, the emperor was very well pleased to see him plunged in hazardous enterprizes; and he was particularly desirous of seeing him removed to a distance from the theatre where his courage and audacity had already shone so conspicuously.

So early as 1523, Charles V., in a letter dated from Valladolid, recommended to Cortez to seek on the eastern and western coasts of New Spain for the secret of a strait (el secreto del estrecho), which should shorten by two thirds the navigation from Cadiz to the East Indies, then called

* The corregidor, Luis Ponce de Leon; the president, Nuño de Guzman; and the bishop, Sebastian Ramirez de Fuenleal.

STATISTICAL?
ANALYSIS.

}XIV. Province of Old California.

the Country of Spices, Cortez, in his answer to the emperor, speaks with the greatest enthusiasm of the probability of this discovery, “which,” he adds, "will render your majesty master of so many kingdoms that you will be considered as the monarch of the whole world*." It was in the course of one of these navigations, undertaken at the particular expense of Cortez, that the coast of Californa was discovered by Herdando de Grixalva in the month of February, 1534 †. His pilate, Fortun Ximenez, was killed by the Californians in the bay of Santa Cruz, called afterwards the Port de la Paz, or of the Marquis del Valle. Discontented with the tediousness and unsuccessfulness of the discoveries in the South Sea, Cortez himself embarked in 1535 with 400 Spaniards and 300 negro slaves at the port of

*Cartes de Cortez, p. 374. 382. 385.

+ I found in a manuscript preserved in the archives of the viceroyalty of Mexico, that California was discovered in 1526. I know not on what authority this assertion is founded. Cortez, in his letters to the emperor, written so late as 1524, frequently speaks of the pearls which were found near the islands of the South Sea; however, the extracts made by the author of the Relacion del Viage al Estrecho de Fuca (p. vii. xxii.) from the valuable manuscript preserved in the Academy of History at Madrid, seem to prove that California had not even been seen in the expedition of Diego Hurtado de Mendoza in 1532.