Page:Mexico (1829) Volumes 1 and 2.djvu/42

 (or Mērĭdă) to the East; and Tăbāscǒ, Las Chĭāpăs, and Ǒăxācă, to the South and West. These are followed in regular succession towards the North by Vĕrăcrūz, Tǎmǎulīpǎs, Săn Lŭīs Pǒtǒsī, New Lēoñ, Cŏhăhūīlă and Tēxăs, which comprise the whole territory to the frontiers of the United States on the Gulph side: La Pūēblă, Mēxĭcŏ, Vāllădŏlīd, Guădălăjāră, Sǒnōrǎ, and Cinălōǎ, the Western extremities of which border on the Pacific; and Qŭarētărŏ, Guănăjūātŏ, Zăcătēcăs, Dŭrāngŏ, Chĭhūāhuă, and New Mexico, which occupy the centre of the country, and extend, between the two oceans, towards the Northern frontier. Beyond these again, are Old and New California, (which in some maps is called New Albion,) and the Indian territory, the extent and inhabitants of which are almost equally unknown. The two Californias and New Mexico are not yet admitted to the rank of independent States, their population not entitling them to be represented in the Congress. Hach of the others returns a quota of deputies, in proportion to the number of its inhabitants.

As it is the general character of the country, and not that of particular States, that forms the subject under consideration in the present chapter, I shall reserve for another part of my work the statistical details which I collected during my visit to the Interior, and proceed to point out here a few of the circumstances, by which the fate of Mexico, as a country, is most likely to be influenced.

Nature has bestowed upon her a soil teeming with fertility, and a climate, under which almost every production of the Old and the New World finds the exact degree of heat necessary in order to bring it to perfection. But the peculiarity of structure, in which this variety of climate originates, neutralizes, in some measure, the advantages which the country might otherwise derive from it, by rendering the communication between the Table-land and the Coast extremely difficult, and confining, within very narrow limits,