ECONOMIC CONDITION OF MEXICO. 



185 



Mexico in eleven days to the Paris Exhibition. Another line crosses the Rio 

 Grande at Piedras Negras between El Paso and Laredo, and a fourth traversino- 

 Sonora connects the American frontier with the port of Guaymas. But all 

 these railways, which give North Americans and their wares easy access to 

 Central Mexico, and which converge towards the heart of the country, constitute 

 a serious political danger. They lay open the frontier to a powerful neighbour, 

 who has already occupied about half of the former territory, and who has more 

 than once threatened to extend the range of her conquests. Hence it becomes all 

 the more urgent to increase the lines which descend from the uplands to the sea- 

 board, and which would afford equal commercial advantages to all countries without 

 any special privilege to the United States. To the Vera Cruz line on the Atlantic 



Fig. 80.— Mexican Railway Systems in 1890. 

 Scale 1 : 30 OOO.dOO 



620 Miles. 



side has already been attached the San Luis Potosi — Tampico line ; but on the 

 Pacific side, where trade is less developed than on the slopes facing towards Europe, 

 the system is not yet completed which will ultimately extend to the seaports of 

 Altata, Mazatlan, San Bias, Manzanillo, Sihuantanejo, Acapulco, Huatulco, and 

 Salina Cruz. On this Pacific side the engineering difficulties are as great as on the 

 Atlantic slope. Thus the line which runs west of the capital across the Ajusco 

 crests to the heights of Las Cruces near Salazar, attains an extreme altitude of 

 10,000 feet, or about 2,600 feet above the city of Mexico ; this is the highest 

 point yet reached by the Mexican system. 



In 1774, the engineer Cramer, commissioned to survey the isthmus, reported 

 that a navigable canal might be cut from ocean to ocean without much difiiculty and 

 expense, and in his report he traced the course of such a canal. But no attempt 



