Page:Travels in Mexico and life among the Mexicans.djvu/582

574 The next place of importance south of Monterey is Saltillo, capital of the State of Coahuila, about sixty-five miles distant, a city of note, containing seventeen thousand inhabitants, with cotton factories and various native industries. The valley in which it is situated is considered fertile. The town lies on the slope of a hill; its streets are well paved; some of its buildings, as the church and bull-ring, are worthy of notice, and its alameda so fine as to attract the attention of every visitor. About seven miles beyond is the hamlet of Buenavista, famous for the battle fought there, on the 23d of February, 1847, between the forces of General Taylor and Santa Anna. The result of that battle was largely due to the almost impregnable position selected by Taylor in the pass of Angostura, where Santa Anna could not use his artillery or cavalry, nor derive much benefit from the great numerical superiority of his infantry. At all events, the five thousand Americans sent ten thousand Mexicans flying southward, so thoroughly whipped that the whole northern province remained in their undisputed possession. Agua Nueva, the village in which the American army was encamped at the approach of Santa Anna, lies at the upper end of a beautiful vale, called La Encantada,—the Enchanted Valley. Not finding this an advantageous position, Taylor fell back to Angostura,—the Narrow Pass,—where the valley, some six miles wide below, narrows to less than two.

The next great city south is San Luis Potosi, at a distance of 385 kilometres, say 275 miles, from Monterey. The intervening country is remarkably dry and sterile, and the plains, as described by a recent traveller, "dusty, monotonous, covered with cacti, aloes, and yucca,—yucca, aloes, and cacti,"—almost exclusively given up to vast haciendas with infrequent towns and ranchos. It is in the main a wretched and thinly populated region, so dry that wells and water-tanks are objects of interest, even of solicitude, and give names to various hamlets, as Agua Nueva and Tanque la Vaca. No more interesting object will be seen than the mountain of Catorce, with its famous mining town, about which are clustered traditions of bonanzas such as few silver regions can lay claim to.