198 MATTHEW FONTAINE MAURY 



ern Mexico, though Maury had no connection with this 

 undertaking. 



He did, however, send General Price, Judge Perkins, 

 and Governor Harris as a commission to examine lands 

 near Cordoba in the state of Vera Cruz. They handed 

 in a very favorable report, and here a colony, named the 

 ''Corlotta" in honor of the Empress, was planted. Of 

 its prospects Maury wrote enthusiastically: *'In the 

 olden times Cordoba was the garden spot of New Spain. 

 There stands on one side, and but a little way off, the 

 Peak of Orizaba, with its cap of everlasting snow, and 

 on the other the sea in full view. These lands are heavily 

 in debt to the Church, and as the Church property has 

 been confiscated — not by the Emperor, though — Max. 

 took possession of these lands for colonization. The 

 railway hence to Vera Cruz passes right through them; 

 and I am now selling these lands to immigrants, as fast 

 as they can be surveyed, at $1.00 the acre on five years' 

 credit. There are about forty of our people already 

 there. Perkins has bought himself a house and has 

 sent for his family ; so has Shelby, and so have a number 

 of others. Mr. Holeman of Missouri, an Episcopal 

 clergyman, with his family — nice people — has been 

 engaged by the settlement as pastor and teacher. I am 

 going to reserve land for a church, cemetery, and school- 

 house. Thus you see, my sweet wife, colonization is a 

 fact, not a chimera. By the time these lands are paid 

 for they will be worth, even if no more settlers come to 

 the Empire, $20, $30, or even $100 the acre, for they 

 produce everything under the sun, and yield perpetual 

 harvests". 



Maury's son Richard secured 640 acres of land in this 

 colony; and by the first of the year 1866 about thirty 



