Page:Mexico, Aztec, Spanish and Republican, Vol 2.djvu/413

Rh 1,000 feet lower than the surrounding county, it nevertheless occupies a considerable elevation above the sea.

The soil in the Bolson is less sandy and of a better quality than in the higher country. Besides wheat and corn, a quantity of cotton is raised in the valley of the river, and wine has been successfully tried. The climate is represented to be so mild, that the root of the cotton plant is seldom destroyed in winter, and thrives for many years.

We have dwelt upon the character and qualities of this extraordinary depression among the mountain ridges of northern Mexico, because we believe that when it is finally explored, the savages exterminated, and the country opened to the advance of civilization, El Bolson de Mapimi may become one of the most important and perhaps fruitful basins among the temperate lands of Mexico.

We have completed the proposed task of sketching the history and geography of Mexico, accompanied by notices of its social and political condition, and of the remains of antiquity sprinkled over its territory. We acknowledge the imperfection of the work, and its unsatisfactoriness even to ourselves. But we have diligently searched the best authorities that could be obtained at home and abroad, and, while we have omitted nothing that might be relied on for the purpose of displaying the physical and intellectual character of the country and people, we have endeavored to indicate clearly those historical antecedents and geographical peculiarities upon which the future progress or decline of the nation is to be founded.

Perhaps no countries are more difficult for full and minute description, in their present social state, than Mexico and the South American nations. Mexico, as we have seen, is a mountain country, with very few navigable streams opening the interior to travellers, and with badly constructed roads, which were scarcely adequate for the most needful transportation required for the subsistence of the people. As soon as the way-farer left the coasts of the Gulf or of the Pacific he penetrated the glens of lofty mountains, or slowly toiled along the inclined plains of their precipitous sides. Wide levels opened in the interior, at considerable distances, but these were separated by ridges of the Cordillera which were, in fact, ramparts capable of defending a warlike people almost without the aid of military improvement. Until within a few years, the back of a horse or of a mule; an old fashioned swung between two beasts