Page:Mexico in 1827 Vol 1.djvu/594

564 interest the traveller, except the goodness of the road. On the third day we entered Petic, about ten o'clock six leagues.

The country through which we had travelled was almost a dead flat, and at this season of the year not a blade of grass was to be seen, or a leaf on the trees: in fact, there are only two kinds of trees in the whole district; one of which is common to all the Internal provinces, bearing a leaf like the locust, but much smaller, and full of prickles: the other is a tree which I have never seen in any other part of Mexico, with a light green stem; its leaf, or blossom, from the dryness of the season, I could not ascertain. The most surprising thing to the European traveller, is to see so much cattle, and game so very fat, in a country where it would appear that they had nothing to eat or drink. At a distance from the roads, there are, probably, streams issuing from the mountains, which water some small valleys, or ravines, but lose themselves subsequently in the sandy plains, as is commonly the case in this State, even with considerable rivers. In the mornings and evenings we saw abundance of hares and deer, which allow you to approach near enough to shoot them. The soil appears to be a light clay of various colours, but generally grey, intermixed with sand. A few leagues to the right and left, are ridges of mountains, not of a considerable height, of reddish and grey hues, full of strata, running east and west. On the road you frequently cross a stratum, of from three to four hundred yards in breadth, of a whitish light marl. There are others of a deep red, and some with a mixture of pebbles, with metallic spots and veins. In many places you find white stone, similar in every respect to the carbonate of lime, which is found in the silver minerals in this state. In one ridge of mountains near Petic, I observed an immense stratum of a shining black substance, which resembled coal, but I could not go out of my way so far to examine it; above and below there appeared to be a grey substance, rather of a lilac hue: