278 J. P. Kimball—Grahamite in the Huasteca, Mexico. 
pes. A considerable quantity of chapapote, as it is called, is 
rought down by these streams, washed out to sea, and finally 
left upon the beach by the action of the waves. After sucha 
thorough exposure to the elements, it loses its pitehy consis- 
tency, and becomes brittle and lustrous like jet. It has thena 
conchoidal fracture. In this condition it is sometimes gathered, 
and, though not extensively known, is highly esteemed as an 
article of export. 
The northwestern portion of the state of Vera Cruz is known 
as the Huasteca, which may be described as the area south of 
the Panuco River, embracing the territory to the north of the 
plateau of Anahuac, watered by the three forks of the prise 
affluent of the Panuco—the Rio San Juan de Mexico—namely, 
the Capadero, the Amajaque and the Moctezuma. This section 
posed it to have an easterly, instead of a northerly, course, 
and to empty into the Laguna de Tamiagua. Saussure’s map 
of the plateau of Anahuac represents this portion of Mex 
ico with some approach to its geography, if not to its to 
pography.+ . 
Last April I made the journey from Tampico to Tempoal 0 
the Capadero, crossing the Topila at Tanseme, and returned to 
the same port by way of Trinidad and Panuco. The top 
graphical features of the country, which thus came under 
observation, are not unlike what I have described to be = 
character of the eastern slope of the Cordilleras farther north 
observed in Chihuahua. ted b 
The same succession of longitudinal valleys separa a 4 
parallel ridges is here seen, together with the same gradu 
clivity toward the summit of the Sierra Madre, whic are, 
latitude is about Zacatecas. The valleys, though broad, 3% 
unlike the champlain valleys of Chihuahua, comparatively zs 
ged, owing to the uneven erosion of the se imentary ee 
which is caused by intrusions of trachyte. Their eon 
is largely due to the successive changes of the beds of st 
* Taylor, Statistics of Coal, p. 498. 
+ Coup d’ceil sur ’hydrologie du Mexique, Geneva, 1862. 
} This Journal, xlviii, 1869, p. 385. 
:e 
