Page:Mexico, Aztec, Spanish and Republican, Vol 2.djvu/271

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The history of Mexico has ever held in sacred regard the region of this ancient republic, whence Cortéz and the Spaniards derived such eminent assistance in the conquest of the Aztec Empire. Immediately after that event it was erected into a province, under which character it was always regarded until the political emancipation of Mexico from Spain, and even after that event up to the period of the adoption of the Acta Constitutiva, when Tlascala was raised to the dignity of a State, as an integral part of the Mexican Republic. The constitution, sanctioned on the 4th of October, 1824, deferred defining absolutely the political character of this region; but on the 24th of November of the same year, it was constitutionally declared to be a Territory of the Confederation. When the Central Government was subsequently adopted, it was added, under the denomination of a district, to the Department of Mexico; but when the federal system was restored by the movement of the 6th of August, 1846, which was afterwards nationalized by the decree of the provisional government on the 22d of August of the same year, and confirmed by the sovereign congress on the 18th of May, 1847, Tlascala re-entered the federal association in its original character of a territory.

Tlascala comprehends within its limits a superficial extent of four hundred square leagues, and contains one city, one hundred and nine villages, eighteen settlements, one hundred and sixty-eight haciendas or large estates, ninety-four ranchos or small farms, eight grist mills, two iron works, and one woollen factory. It is divided into the three partidos of Tlaxco, Huamantla and Tlascala, the latter of which contains the capital town of the same name about seven leagues north of Puebla. The territory is of an oval form, lying between forty minutes and one degree thirty-three minutes east longitude from Mexico, and nineteen degrees, and nineteen degrees fortytwo minutes of north latitude. Its climate is mild and healthful, and its population, which in 1837, was rated at about eighty thousand, has been found to increase, on comparison of a number of years, about one thousand eight hundred and seventy-eight annually, of which nine hundred and thirty-seven are males, and nine hundred and forty-one females.

The productions of Tlascala are chiefly of a cereal character, but its genial climate and soil are capable of yielding the fruits of the tierras calientes, frias, and templadas.