ACAPULCO, PACIFIC COAST. 



:>5 



" Such was the commercial condition of the town down to the time of the inde- 

 pendence. From this time it was lost to commerce, until it was made a halfway 

 house on the voyage to California. The town lies upon a narrow intervale between 

 the hills and the harbor. It is built of the frailest materials, and is destroyed 

 about once in ten years by an earthquake. 



" The castle of San Diego stands upon a high bank ; and the harbor appears 

 like a nest scooped out of the mountains, into and out of which the tide ebbs 

 and flows through a double channel riven by an earthquake in the solid rock. 

 There is still another opening in the sharp mountain-ridge that encloses it from 

 the sea; but this opening, dug by the labor of man, at a point opposite the entrance 

 of the harbor, was to let the cool sea-breeze in upon one of the hottest and most 

 unhealthy places upon the continent. Such, in substance, is and was the little 

 city of Acapulco, the seat and focus of the Oriental commerce of New Spain." 



This admirable description will apply to Acapulco of to-day, except that it 

 would be well to add that the city awaits only the coming of the railroad from the 

 city of Mexico, to awaken a revival of its lost commerce. The uniting of this 

 port by rail with the gulf-port of Vera Cruz was the first object of railway 

 projectors in Mexico; and this will at last be accomplished by the completion 

 of the Morelos Railroad, through Amecameca, Cuernavaca, and Chilpancingo. 



By road, the journey between this port and the capital consumes twelve days, 

 over one of the worst trails in the country, worn by the feet of mules for the past 

 three centuries. 



ANCIENT AQUEDrCT, VERA CRt'Z. 



