Page:Our Sister Republic - Mexico.djvu/248

242 Mr. Archibald Hope, an Englishman forty-five years resident in Mexico, who is erecting a cotton and woolen factory and flour-mill, at this point, which were to be ready for operation in a few days. This mill is furnished with the best of machinery from England and the United States, and will employ three hundred workmen, and is in all its departments, one of the most complete in Mexico.

Wood is sold every where in Central Mexico, by the arroba of twenty-live pounds weight. Here it costs only five or six cents per arroba at Celaya it costs seven to eight cents, and at Queretaro ten cents. As we approach the Capital and ascend to greater altitude, the country become less well-wooded, the hills—save in a few places—are bare of trees, and only on the highest mountains could we see any large timber. The oak—of a species resembling the live oak of California—fresno, willow, water-beech and mesquite are the principal trees to be seen.

The nopal, or prickly pear, grows in great luxuriance, and the maguey increases in size and value, but the peculiar vegetation of the tropics has mainly disappeared. The nights at this time were cool, though there was no frost, and the thermometer during the day stood at sixty to seventy degrees.

We left Tepeji del Rio, early on the 15th of Nov., for our last days' ride towards Mexico. For thirty-eight days we had been "swinging around a circle," as it were, having advanced northward from Manzanillo to Guadalajara, thence eastward to Guanajuato, thence southeasterly and south to Queretaro and Mexico, traveling in all a distance of about eight hundred Spanish miles, and halting some days at each of the principal cities.