102 MEXICO, CENTEAL AMERICA, WEST INDIES. 



is 650 feet liig-h, and contains above ground 460,000,000 tons of metal, enough to 

 supply the whole of North America for a hundred years. Like Chihuahua, 

 Durango prides itself on its sumptuous cathedral, and the city is dominated by an old 

 palace of the Inquisition. The local mint issues gold and silver coins to a yearly 

 average value of about £200,000. Durango has often been called the " City of 

 Scorpions," and in 1865 a small price having been put upon these arachnidse, as 

 many as 55,000 were brought to the municipality in two months. 



All the other towns in the state, such as Mezqitifal, Gnayisamay, San Dimas, 

 Papasquiaro, Tamaznia, and Inde in the highland region, and Nombre de Dios, San 

 Juan del Rio, Cuencame, Nazaa, and Mapimi on the lower parts of the plateau, owe 

 their origin and prosperity to their silver mines ; but the deposits also contain gold, 

 lead, and tin. 



Extensive burial-grounds have been discovered in the caves amid the hills and 

 mountains encircling the Bulsonde Mapimi wilderness. In these graves the bodies 

 are buried in a crouching attitude, and are wrapped in shrouds of agave fibre over 

 which are wound coloured scarfs. A single cave contained over a thousand of 

 these mummies, nearly all of which were carried off by American explorers, and 

 distributed amongst various collections in the United States. 



North-Eastern States — Coahuila, Nuevo Leon, Tamaulipas. 



Coahuila, which is conterminous on the east side with Chihuahua, and which, like 

 it, is separated by the Hio Bravo from the United States, also resembles it in its 

 general relief. Coahuila has also its Sierra Madre, but on the opposite or east side, 

 while westwards it expands into vast desert wastes, where the running waters are 

 lost in saline meres or lagoons. The slopes of the mountains, which are drained 

 by streams descending from gorge to gorge down to the Hio Bravo, are disposed 

 in delightful and fertile valleys suitable for cultivating all the plants of the tem- 

 perate and sub-tropical zones. Yet this region has still a population of less than 

 two to the square mile, and till recently it was exposed to the annual incursions of 

 the murderous Apache and Comanche marauders. In 1879, after the complete 

 submission of these ferocious Indians, a large number of immigrants were attracted 

 to the Sierra Mojada, where auriferous silver ores, apparently very productive, had 

 lately been found. But the hopes of the speculators were not realised, and most of 

 the immigrants were compelled by the lack of water and provisions to retire from 

 these arid uplands. The coalfields, also, which skirt the course of the Hio Bravo, 

 and from which one of the Mexican riverain stations took the name of Pied ras 

 Negras, or " Black Stones," are no longer systematical!}^ worked. The future wealth 

 of Coahuila will be derived not from its mineral stores, but from the produce of 

 the soil. Monclova, formerly Coahuila, which stands en a headstream of the 

 Salado affluent of the Pdo Bravo, is surrounded by fertile plains, and long staple 

 cotton is grown at Santa Buenaventura in the environs. 



Saltillo (El Saltillo or Leona Vicar io), capital of Coahuila, lies at the foot of a 

 slaty eminence towards the south-east corner of the state, in an upland valley on 

 the slope of the mountains separating Coahuila from Nuevo Loon. The running 



