Page:Mexico in 1827 Vol 1.djvu/42

16 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, the intercourse of the States in the interior with each other. On the Table-land there are no canals, (with the exception of that from Chalco to Mexico, about seven leagues in extent,) and no navigable rivers; nor does the nature of the roads allow of a general use of wheel-carriages; every thing is therefore conveyed on mules, from one point to another, and this mode of carriage, when applied to the more bulky agricultural produce of the country, increases, enormously, the price of the articles of most general consumption, before they can reach the principal markets. Thus, in the Capital, which draws its supplies from a circle of perhaps sixty leagues, comprising the valley of Mexico, and the fertile plains of Tŏlūcă, as well as the great corn lands of the Băxīŏ and La Pūēblă, wheat,