TERRITORY OF TLASCALA HISTORY, POSITION, SIZE. 231 



THE TERRITORY OF TLASCALA. 



The history of Mexico has ever held in sacred regard the 

 region of this ancient republic, whence Cortez and the Spaniards 

 derived such eminent assistance in the conquest of the Aztec Em- 

 pire. Immediately after that event it was erected into a province, 

 under which character it was always regarded until the political 

 emancipation of Mexico from Spain, and even after that event up 

 to the period of the adoption of the Acta Constitutiva, when Tlas- 

 cala was raised to the dignity of a State, as an integral part of the 

 Mexican Republic. The constitution, sanctioned on the 4th of Oc- 

 tober, 1824, deferred defining absolutely the political character of 

 this region ; but on the 24th of November of the same year, it was 

 constitutionally declared to be a Territory of the Confederation. 

 When the Central Government was subsequently adopted, it was 

 added, under the denomination of a district, to the Department of 

 Mexico ; but when the federal system was restored by the move- 

 ment of the 6th of August, 1846, which was afterwards national- 

 ized by the decree of the provisional government on the 22d of Au- 

 gust of the same year, and confirmed by the sovereign congress on 

 the 18th of May, 1847, Tlascala re-entered the federal association 

 in its original character of a territory. 



Tlascala comprehends within its limits a superficial extent of four 

 hundred square leagues, and contains one city, one hundred and 

 nine villages, eighteen settlements, one hundred and sixty-eight 

 haciendas or large estates, ninety-four ranchos or small farms, eight 

 grist mills, two iron works, and one woollen factory. It is divided 

 into the three partidos of Tlaxco, Huamantla and Tlascala, the lat- 

 ter of which contains the capital town of the same name about seven 

 leagues north of Puebla. The territory is of an oval form, lying be- 

 tween forty minutes and one degree thirty-three minutes east longi- 

 tude from Mexico, and nineteen degrees, and nineteen degrees forty- 

 two minutes of north latitude. Its climate is mild and healthful, 

 and its population, which in 1837, was rated at about eighty thou- 

 sand, has been found to increase, on comparison of a number of 

 years, about one thousand eight hundred and seventy-eight annually, 

 of which nine hundred and thirty-seven are males, and nine hundred 

 and forty-one females. 



The productions of Tlascala are chiefly of a cereal character, but 

 its genial climate and soil are capable of yielding the fruits of the 

 tierras calientes, Jrias, and templadas. 

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