Page:Travels in Mexico and life among the Mexicans.djvu/531

Rh who fought a terrible battle near this spot, in which the latter were beaten. A curious fact was brought to our notice here,—that, while at Huitzo the people speak the Miztec language, in Etla, only four leagues distant, they speak the Zapotec.

Bidding adieu to our courteous guide, Don Jesus Filio, we reached, after hard riding along magnificent fields of corn, through which the Etla River runs, the outskirts of the city of Oaxaca, where we found Don José, our compañero, an ex-colonel of artillery, awaiting our arrival at a cross-road, whence he escorted us to the Plaza and to the Hotel Nacional. There we footed up our first week's journey and found that in five days' diligent travel we had accomplished but two hundred and twenty miles, divided as follows: by tramway, first day, thirty miles; by diligence, second day, sixty miles; by horseback, third, fourth, and fifth days, one hundred and thirty miles.

Guaxaca (Oaxaca, pronounced Wahháka), says a writer of nearly three hundred years ago, "is a Bishop's Seat, not very big, yet a fair and beautiful City to behold, which standeth threescore leagues from Mexico in a pleasant Valley." The seat of this ancient bishopric is a triple vale, a trefoil in shape, with the capital city, Oaxaca, at the stem. From the north leads in the valley of Etla, with its broad river meandering through a billowy sea of corn-fields. This river turns south as it reaches the city and runs towards the Pacific, through the valley of Ejutla, while the third vale, known as Tlacolula, trends westward. Whichever way the eye may wander, the view is bounded by hills. The city itself is built at the foot of a hill, as it slopes to the river, a broad, flat-roofed plain of stone buildings, above which, every few squares, are thrust up domes and towers, of cathedral, churches, and convents, with the various plazas indicated by dark-green masses of trees.

Each valley is about twenty miles in length and from two to four miles broad, and from the sterile hills that enclose them to the lowest depression of the basin the soil gradually increases in fertility. This valley, or conjunction of valleys, if not the objective point of the Mexican Southern Railway, is at least the most important on the line. It is the centre of the State,