Page:Face to Face With the Mexicans.djvu/455

Rh Roblano brick, which is known to have the consistency of stone, and the greater part of the plain on which the city is built is of a calcareous nature. There is abundance of chalk, or marl, for making lime, and this is manufactured in more than sixty kilns which run the year long. There is also another quarry at a league's distance, whence comes in great abundance the stone called chiluca in the capital. From the river Tetlaxcuafar, which traverses the city, and from the full-flowing Atoyac, half a league away, is taken gravel in abundance, and divers sorts of sand for building purposes. Three leagues off plenty of iron is found and a large foundry is kept running, there being others for bronze in Puebla. The neighboring mountains of Ualintze, of Tepenene and Tepozuchitl furnish the town with wood and some charcoal. The city has sweet water and sulphur water, and sundry little streams which all the year nourish the farming and gardening lands.

"Besides these elements, all of which it seems almost an exaggeration to attribute to so restricted a territory, we must mention that its easy means of communication find at a distance of seven leagues the mountains of Tecali and Tepeaca, which consist entirely of translucent marble, fine and vari-colored, which is called 'Mexican onyx,' as well as other solid marbles used for pavements. These mountains of marble would suffice to build a hundred cities of the size of London, Paris, Pekin, Vienna, or New York, without including in the calculation the mountains of transparent marble of Tecuantitlan, in the district of Acatlan, whose territory covers seventy square leagues of stone-fields of divers marbles. The city of Puebla, instead of being built of dark granite, might consist of buildings of transparent marble—a city unique on the continent: it certainly has the material near at hand.

"Brief reference might be made to the resources of Puebla which may be made available at reasonable rates, by means of the easy modes of transport. The range of coal of the district of Acatlan commences at Tefeji de Rodriguez and ends at the Pacific shore in the State of Guerrero, spreading over the State of Oaxaca until it reaches Tehuantepec. To the north of the State extensive fields of