lOG MEXICO, CEXTEAL AMEEICA, WEST INDIES. 



archseologists have made numerous finds, especially of monos, or " monkeys," that 

 is, rude human figures. 



Inland States — Zacatecas, Aguascalientes, San Luis Potosi. 



The central or " inland " states, which rise in terraces towards the southern 

 extremity of the Anahuac tableland, are relatively to their size far more densely 

 peopled than the northern provinces ; the greater diversity of their relief, more 

 abundant supply of water and more exuberant vegetation, enable them to support a 

 far larger number of inhabitants. Yet the same arid aspect of the northern 

 regions is still maintained without much modification as far as the central parts of 

 Zacatecas and San Luis Potosi. Numerous local names, such as Rio Salado, Salitre, 

 Laguna Seca, Pozo Plondo, sufficiently attest the arid nature of the soil and the 

 brackish quality of its waters, while many villages owe their designation of Mez- 

 quite or Mezquital to the thickets of thorny scrub by which they are surrounded. 

 The traveller arriving from the United States by the Central Mexican Railway 

 detects no marked change in the scenery until he reaches the town of Fresnillo. 

 This place stands, in fact, at an altitude of 7,300 feet, exactly on the divide between 

 the waters flowing north to the closed basins of the Bolson de Mapirai, and those 

 draining to the Pacific through the Rio Lerma. 



Zacatecas, capital of the state and of the old Zacatec territor}^ is one of the 

 earliest Spanish settlements in Mexico, having been founded by Nuno de Guzman 

 in 1540. The city occupies a group of deep and winding gorges, which are com- 

 manded on the north-east by the porphyritic escarpments of La Bufa surmounted 

 by a citadel and a church. Zacatecas is hemmed in between oth«r rocky ramparts 

 furrowed by crevasses, whence the rain-water descends in cascades to swell a rising 

 tributary of the Lerma. Zacatecas owes its prosperity to the silver mines of the 

 surrounding porphyritic and schistose mountains interspersed with quartz and 

 calcareous beds. Some of the lodes are extremely rich, and those of San Bernab, 

 worked for three hundred and fifty years, are not yet exhausted. The most pro- 

 ductive are usually found, not in the ravines or on the gentle slopes of the hills, 

 but in the steepest places and even on the jagged topmost crests. Thus the veta 

 grande, or " great lode," running north-west and south-east, three miles north of 

 Zacatecas, is embedded in a lofty summit 8,650 feet high, on which are perched 

 the dwellings and workshops of a mining village. Since 1810 the Za,catecas mint 

 has coined a sum of over £68,000,000 in gold and silver, and during the decade 

 from 1878 to 1888 the average yearly issue has been £1,150,000, almost exclu- 

 sively in silver dollar pieces. The little mining town of Sombrercte, lying about 

 125 miles north-west of Zacatecas, on the Durango road, had also its mint, which, 

 however, has been closed since the war of independence. At the time of Hum- 

 boldt's visit the " black lode " of Sombrerete had yielded more metal than any other 

 vein in the whole of America. A village not far from Sombrerete bears the name 

 of Chalchihuifes, or " Emeralds," from the greenish stones here found, which 

 resemble jade, and which were highly valued by the ancient Aztecs. The Zaca- 

 tecas district abounds in natuial curiosities. Several small lakes contain carbonate 



