Page:Mexico of the Mexicans.djvu/152

130 mountain range crosses the State, and the valleys which lie between its peaks are of surpassing beauty and fertility. The climate is sub-tropical and healthy, with a moderate rainfall, and agriculture is extensively engaged in. The Indian races of Oaxaca, the Zapotecs and Mixtecs, the descendants of those who built ruined Mitla, still form the greater part of the population, and they are greatly in demand throughout the Republic as clerks and schoolmasters, and because of their intelligence generally. Railway communication is scarcely what it should be, but before the Revolution this want was being surely but slowly met. The city of Oaxaca is typically Spanish and rather backward. It was originally an Aztec military post, called Huaxyacac, and was founded in 1486, according to native tradition. The whole valley of Oaxaca was settled upon Cortés by the Spanish crown, in recognition of his great services, and he was also given the title of Marquis del Valle de Oaxaca. The city has had a chequered history, and has produced many great figures in Mexican life, notably Benito Juarez and Porfirio Diaz, the two most celebrated Presidents who ever directed the affairs of the Mexican Republic. The population is about 35,000, mostly Indian.

It was in the State of Vera Cruz that the Spaniards made their first landing in Mexico, and it has thus always had a certain amount of sentimental interest for their descendants. Here it was that Cortés first unsheathed the sword of conquest for Emperor and Holy Catholic Church, and here it was that he received that kindness from the natives which in his fierce fanaticism he so grossly abused. The State of Vera Cruz is a narrow strip of land, tropical near the sea and rising somewhat abruptly to the summits of the Sierra Madre mountains. Its picturesqueness is unquestionable, and it contains several high mountain peaks, among others that of Orizaba, on the Puebla border. The valleys between these peaks are fertile in the extreme, and gave the early Spaniards a very high