Page:Vol 6 History of Mexico by H H Bancroft.djvu/577

Rh extends through the states of Chihuahua, Durango, Zacatecas, Aguascalientes, Guanajuato, and Querétaro, to the city of Mexico. The company, moreover, possesses the right to build an interoceanic cross-line extending from San Blas, on the Pacific coast, to Tampico. When this is completed, with all the ramifications of branch lines to important towns, it will embrace in its iron mesh twenty-one principal cities, the populations of which, including Mexico, amount to 1,000,000 in number. In the construction of the Mexican Central, some difficulty was encountered in obtaining egress from the valley of Mexico, as also in surmounting the rocky ridges in the states of Guanajuato and Zacatecas, but the intervening valleys and the immense plains extending farther north offered little opposition to engineering skill. On March 8, 1884, the line was completed, the two sections uniting near Fresnillo.

The narrow-gauge line, known as the Mexican National, or Palmer-Sullivan, has its northern terminus in Laredo, on the Texan frontier, and will connect with the capital, by passing along the eastern slope range. Unfortunately, the company, after expending large sums of money, was obliged to close its operations through want of funds. Up to 1887, the line, in running order, had only reached Saltillo, but a considerable amount of preliminary work had been done southward.

Between these two great highland thoroughfares there lies a stretch of level table-land which has not