212 
EL PASO 
It has been settled but a few years, and was selected 
on account of the broad and rich valley near, and the 
facilities that existed for irrigating it. Its houses are 
mostly of a class called jacals^ i. e. built of upright 
sticks, their interstices filled with mud, though a better 
class of adobe buildings have just been erected along the 
main street, for the occupation of the military, and for 
places of business. The central position of Dona Ana, 
and its fine lands, led to its selection for a military 
post. At the time of my visit there were two com- 
panies of United States troops here under the com- 
mand of Major Shepard. 
Six or eight miles below Dona Ana, on the oppo- 
site side of the river, is the town of Mesilla^ containing 
between six and seven hundred inhabitants,^ a place 
which owes its origin to circumstances growing out of 
the late war with Mexico. These circumstances it 
m^y be proper to relate, as well as the origin of its 
name. 
Mesilla is the diminutive of the Spanish word mesa^ 
i. e., table, also table-land, or plateau, and is applied to 
a lesser plateau in the valley of the Rio Grande, beneath ' 
that of the great mesa or table-land, which extends for 
several hundred miles in all directions from the Rio 
Grande. It is situated on the western side of the Rio 
Grande, about fifty miles above El Paso, in latitude 
about 32 degrees 18 minutes north, and until the 
year 1850 it was without an inhabitant. 
Immediately preceding, and after the war with 
* This was the population in March, 1851, as stated to me by the 
authorities of El Paso. 
