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tez, wrote to his sovereign shortly after the siege of Tenochtitlan : "All the plants of Spain thrive admirably in this land. We shall not proceed here as we have done in the isles, where we have neglected cultivation and destroyed the inhabitants. A sad experience ought to render us more prudent. I beseech your majesty to give .orders to the Casa de Contratacion of Seville, that no vessel set sail for this country without a certain quantity of plants and grain." The great fertility of the Mexican soil is incontrovertible, but the want of water, of which we have spoke in the third chapter, frequently diminishes the abundance of the harvests.

There are only two seasons known in the equinoxial region of Mexico even as far as the 28° of north latitude: the rainy season (estacion de las aguas), which begins in the month of June or July, and ends in the month of September or October, and the dry season (el estio), which lasts eight months, from October to the end of May. The first rains generally commence on the eastern declivity of the Cordillera. The formation of the clouds and the precipitation of the water dissolved in the air, commence on the coast of Vera Cruz. These phenomena are accompanied with strong electrical explosions, which take place successively at Mexico, Guadalaxara, and on the western coast. The chemical action is propagated from east to west in the direction of the trade

winds, and the rains begin fifteen or twenty days sooner at Vera Cruz than on the central tableland. Sometimes we see in the mountain, even below 2000 metres of absolute height, rain mixed with rime (gresil) and snow in the months of November, December, and January; but these rains are very short, and only last from four to five days; and however cold they may be, they are considered as very useful for the vegetation of wheat and the pasturages. In Mexico in general as in Europe, the rains are most frequent in the mountainous regions, especially in that . part of the Cordilleras which extends from the Pic d'Orizaba by Guanaxuato, Sierra de Pinos, Zacatecas, and Bolaños, to the mines of Guarisamey and the Rosario.

The prosperity of New Spain depends on the proportion established between the duration of two seasons of rain and drought. The agriculturist has seldom to complain of too great. a humidity, and if sometimes the maize and the cerealia of Europe are exposed to partial inundations in the plains, of which several form circular basins shut in by the mountains, the grain sown on the slopes of the hills vegetates with so much the greater vigour. From the parallel of 24° to that of 30" the rains are seldomer and of short duration. Happily the snow, of which there is great abund

* 6561 feet. Trans

ance from the 26° of latitude, supplies the want of rain.

The extreme drought to which New Spain is exposed from the month of June to the month of September compels the inhabitants in a great part of this vast country to have recourse to artificial irrigations. The harvests of wheat are rich in proportion to the water taken from the rivers by means of canals of irrigation. This system is particularly followed in the fine plains which border the river Santiago, called Rio Grande, and in those between Salamanca, Irapuato, and the villa de Leon. Canals of irrigation (acequias), reservoirs of water (presas), and the hydraulical machines called norias, are objects of the greatest importance for Mexican agriculture. Like Persia and the lower part of Peru, the interior of New Spain is infinitely productive in nutritive gramina wherever the industry of man has diminished the natural dryness of the soil and the air.

Nowhere does the proprietor of a large farm more frequently feel the necessity of employing engineers skilled in surveying ground and the principles of hydraulic constructions. However, at Mexico, as elsewhere, those arts have been preferred which please the imagination to those which are indispensable to the wants of domestic life. They possess architects, who judge learnedly of the beauty and symmetry of an edifice;

but nothing is still so rare there as to find persons capable of constructing machines, dikes, and canals, Fortunately, the feeling of their want has excited the national industry, and a certain sagacity peculiar to all mountainous people supplies in some sort the want of instruction.

In the places which are not artificially watered the Mexican soil yields only pasturage to the months of March and April. At this period, when the south-west wind, which is dry and warm (viento de la Misteca), frequently blows, all verdure disappears, and the gramina and other herbaceous plants gradually dry up. This change is more sensibly felt when the rains of the preceding year have been less abundant and the summer has been warmer. The wheat then, especially in the month of May, suffers much if it is not artificially watered. The rain only excites the vegetation in the month of June; with the first falls the fields become covered with verdure; the foliage of the trees is renewed; and the European who recalls to his mind incessantly the climate of his native country enjoys doubly this season of the rains, because it presents to him the image of spring.

In indicating the dry and rainy months we have described the course which the meteorological phenomena commonly follow. For several years, however, these phenomena appear to have deviated from the general law, and the exceptions have unfortunately been to the disadvantage of agri

culture. The rains have become more rare, and especially more tardy. The year in which I visited the Volcan de Jorullo the season of rain was three whole months later than usual; it began in the month of September, and only lasted till towards the middle of November. It is observed in Mexico that the maize, which suffers much more than the wheat from the frosts in autumn, has the advantage of recovering more easily after long droughts. In the intendancy of Valladolid, between Salamanca and the lake of Cuizeo, I have seen fields of maize which were believed to be destroyed vegetate with an astonishing vigour after two or three days of rain. The great breadth of the leaves undoubtedly contributes greatly to the nutrition and vegetative force of this American gramen.

In the farms (haciendas de trigo) in which the system of irrigation is well established, in those of Silao and Irapuato, for example, near Leon, the wheat is twice watered; first, when the young plant springs up in the month of January; and the second time in the beginning of March, when the ear is on the point of developing itself. Sometimes even the whole field is inundated before sowing. It is observed, that in allowing the water to remain for several weeks, the soil is so impregnated with humidity that the wheat resists more easily the long droughts. They scatter the seed (semer à la volée), at the moment when the waters begin to flow from the opening

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