Page:Travels in Mexico and life among the Mexicans.djvu/610

602 and glide so gently over the Border as to be wholly unaware that you have changed your domicil from the United States to Mexico. It was thus that I found myself for a third time entering Mexican territory, within three weeks of my departure from St. Louis, and after having put behind me a total distance (including side trips) of over four thousand miles, over roads that would put to shame many of our Eastern tracks, both for smoothness and for solidity of construction.

Chihuahua (pronounced Chee-waw'-waw) is the largest State in the Mexican confederation, having an area of 120,000 square miles. Sand and alkali plains occupy the greater portion of the territory not upheaved into mountains, and it is computed that at least one half its surface is unfit for cultivation, or even for occupation, by civilized man. But along the rivers, about some of the lagunas, and in the mountain valleys, the soil is fertile, and produces excellent crops of wheat, corn, flax, beans, barley, cotton, and the fruits of the temperate zone, including the best grapes for wine manufacture in the country. Grazing is the chief occupation, and immense herds are raised and sent over the Border for a market, some of the ranches numbering their sheep, horses, and cattle by the hundred thousand. Vegetation is sparse, except in the mountains and on the borders of the streams, where also good timber is said to be abundant. The climate is temperate on the uplands, and, though snow falls a foot or two in depth on the mountains, extreme heat is sometimes experienced in the valleys. A peculiarity of the desert region of Chihuahua,—which also applies to the barren tracts of contiguous Texas and New Mexico, as well as Arizona,—is that nearly all the vegetation is supplied with thorns or spines. "First come the endless variety of cacti; these are seen from the tiny plant not larger than the finger to the giant petahaya, raising its tall stem to the height of fifty feet. Then follow