33 



Mexico has a great many islands, situated near the coast, although 

 not any of very great area, the greater number being uninhabited, 

 although some of them are very fertile, and could be the seat of a 

 large population. Among the most important are : El Carmen, 

 the largest in the Gulf of Mexico ; San Juan de Ulua and Sacrificios, 

 opposite the port of Veracruz ; Mujeres, in the Caribbean Sea ; Guada- 

 lupe, about seventy-five miles from the west coast of Lower California; 

 the Tres Marias group, about thirty miles from the same coast ; the 

 Revillagigedo group, not far from the coast of Colima ; and adjoining 

 the coast of the State of Michoacan, the Alcatraz Island. 



As I have already stated, Mexico has a very broken surface, with 

 high mountains, causing streams to run down a very inclined plane, 

 forming torrents with rapid cascades, which contribute to embellish 

 the natural features of the country. These conditions, however, pre- 

 vent us from having large navigable rivers, and furnishing a cheap 

 way of transportation, which is one of the greatest advantages the 

 United States enjoys, and which so largely contributed in its early 

 days to the development of the country, making transportation to long 

 distances both easy and cheap. While the torrents descending from 

 the mountains afford an immense water-power which, in the course 

 of time, may be used as a motor for industrial purposes they meet 

 when they reach a valley and run smoothly there through a ravine 

 until finally they reach the coast, and it is therefore only at a compara- 

 tively small distance from the sea that they can be made navigable. 



Our principal rivers, measuring their positions from north to south, 

 are the Rio Grande which from El Paso, Texas, to the sea, is the 

 boundary line between the two countries, and which used to be a large 

 river ; but as it rises in Colorado and passes through New Mexico, 

 and the inhabitants of both have taken for irrigation purposes most of 

 the water that it carries, it becomes entirely dry during the dry season 

 after the freshets, very much to the distress of the inhabitants of its 

 borders from El Paso to Ojinaga, especially on the Mexican side, which 

 has been inhabited for three hundred years, the people using the water 

 for irrigation on the other side there being hardly any population, 

 and now they find that their farms are entirely worthless for want of 

 water. After passing Presidio del Norte, now called Ojinaga, the Con- 

 chos River and other tributaries of the Rio Grande River supply it with 

 water, although not to the extent it had before the water was taken in 

 Colorado and New Mexico. The Mescala, or Balsas River, rises in 

 the central plateau near the Valley of Mexico, passes by the State of 

 Puebla to the southwest, by Mixteca of Oaxaca, and finally empties 

 into the Pacific at Zacatula. As indicated by its name, it is, to a lim- 

 ited extent, navigable along its lower reaches ; above the bar it is 

 accessible to small craft, which, higher up, are arrested by rapids, 



VOL. 13 



