Page:Travels in Mexico and life among the Mexicans.djvu/441

 which it is proper the road should touch at, although not so stipulated in the concession. As the road goes northward it will traverse a rich agricultural region, principally in the State of Durango, where, on a great scale, are cultivated cotton, sugar-cane, and the cereals. The railroad will carry life and colonization to that section, which sadly lacks labor and means of communication. The same may be said of the plains which the road crosses until reaching Paso del Norte."

The foregoing has been quoted at length, not only as accurately descriptive of the country, but as the expression of a progressive Mexican, speaking for the more enlightened of his brethren. Though the Central nominally began work in June, 1880, little progress was made until late in that year; but by August, 1882, over four hundred miles of track had been laid, and surveys made for a large portion of the line. By obtaining permission to enter Mexico from the north, the management was enabled to push its construction trains from both ends, thus saving immense cost in freights, and long and vexatious delays.

On August 2, 1882, the first train crossed the Border, at El Paso, from the United States into Mexico. Progress over the desert plains was rapid, and by the middle of September, 1882, the road was completed to Chihuahua, the isolated northern capital of the great State of the same name, when twenty-five thousand people assembled at the celebration of this event, including some two thousand from the United States.

From the city of Mexico working northward, the advance has been even more rapid, owing to the accumulation of material and the incentive of rich regions to be opened up. After entering Tula, the ancient seat of Toltec empire, the engineers of the Central bent every energy towards gaining the populous centres beyond. Never halting in their triumphant progress northward, everywhere hailed with joyous acclamations, they successively reached and passed Queretaro, Celaya, and Silao, reaching at last, in November, 1882, the gate of Guanajuato, the capital city of a great mining State. This city, being intrenched among almost inaccessible hills, was connected with the trunk line by a branch, at the opening of which it was estimated that at least