42 
ENGINEERING REPORTS. 
of the river, for the entire distance, and at a small expense. 
This road would be available for bringing provisions and ma- 
terials of all kinds to the work, except for two or three months 
in the rainy season, when it would have to be abandoned on 
account of high water. 
The natural scenery of this part of the route is wild and ro- 
mantic ; at the point of passing the summit of the Xochiapa 
hills, the banks of the river rise abruptly to a height of six or 
eight hundred feet, and the channel is nearly choked up with 
huge rocks that have fallen from the banks as they have been 
undermined by the action of the water. Intersecting the main 
channel, are deep, narrow ravines, through which, in the rainy 
season, the drainage of the neighboring hills is discharged in 
foaming torrents. 
Our surveys and observations establish the fact that this is the 
only practicable route west of the valley of the Almoloya 
River, by which a railroad can be constructed across this part 
of the Isthmus. 
We ran a line a short distance up the Xuchiapa Creek, but 
found the ascent much too rapid to be overcome with a grade 
of sixty feet per mile. 
From the point of leaving the Malatengo River to the termi- 
nation of our survey going south, the excavations will be entirely 
in a compact gravel, consisting of rounded quartz and sandstone 
pebbles. For the first two miles of this distance the ground is 
quite undulating, and will require a grade of sixty feet per mile, 
and rather expensive work, to overcome the ascent from the 
river ; the surface of the country then becomes much more uni- 
form and level. 
The plains of Xochiapa are bounded on the north by the 
range of hills of the same name, and extend about six miles to 
the south, and four or five miles in an east and west direction. 
They are drained by the Malatengo and its tributaries, and are 
almost entirely destitute of timber; they generally present a 
very smooth surface, but more or less undulating, the soil being 
gravelly, and unfit for tillage, except in the valleys bordering 
the streams, but afford fine pasturage, and we find scattered 
over them numerous herds of cattle, horses, and mules. 
