184 



MEXICO, CENTRAL AMERICA. WEST INDIES. 



skill, in wbicli lightness and strength are happily combined. But the section 

 between Maltrata and Boca del Monte, giving direct access to the edge of the 

 Anahuac plateau, is so precipitous that it never fails to excite the apprehension of 

 travellers, both ascending and descending this tremendous incline, which has a total 

 rise of no less than 4,000 feet in a distance of sixteen miles in a bee line. At the 

 hio-hest pass near the Malinche volcano the Hue stands at an altitude of 8,420 feet 

 above sea-level, and to avoid a still more elevated pass over the snowy range, it is 

 deflected northwards, thus obliquely traversing the Mexican valley in its entire 



rig. 79. — The Boca del Monte Ascent. 

 Scale 1 : 90,000. 



18° 





# 





hi. -W ' i 



^ i»^ 





^^.\. MrV;-*M-i 



VIALTRAT/VÎ 



9^° e West of" br-eenwich 



97° 15' 



3 300 Yanls. 



length. With good reason the Mexicans speak of this great engineering work as 

 a monument of human genius. 



To connect the network with that of the United States was a far easier under- 

 taking. The Anahuac plateau has a general incline from south to north without 

 any abrupt declivities, so that throughout most of the section between the capital 

 and the E,io Grande del Norte heavy engineering operations could be dispensed 

 with. In 1884. two years after the Americans themselves had reached this river 

 at Laredo, the Mexicans opened their line to Nuevo Laredo on the opposite bank. 

 The same year they completed another line running parallel with the western 

 Sierra Madre all the way to Paso del Norte. Railway communication was 

 thus henceforth continuous between Mexico and San Francisco, St. Louis and 

 New York: by the latter route passengers were able, in 1889, to travel from 



