1892 
San Luis 
Potosi 
(S.L.Pctosi) 
: 4 ■ • ’ , . - 
At San Luis Potosi I was informed that the dogs from the outskirts 
of town range out into the country at night and make such havoc in the 
cornfields, by eating the green ears, that the owners of the fields 
are obliged to exercise great ingenuity in making traps to capture 
them. Cactus or maguey hedges surround the fields and at some weak 
places nooses are set with a vertically swinging lever, so that on 
attempting to pass, a dog is swung high in air to strangle or be dis¬ 
patched by the owner of the field. 
liy next trip from San Luis was to the east to Villar station on 
the Mex, Central R,R, this plaoe is on the summit of a mountain 
pass about 800 feet above the plain of San Luis, The hills only rise 
some 1000 to 1200 feet above the plain and are devoid of pines. Oaks, 
walnuts, and madronos ocour, mainly as low bushy thickets except on 
north slopes where they became good-sised trees. In such places, the 
trees are hung with long Spanish moss, and a dwarf palm 2 to 3 feet 
high grows abundantly, 
I found here Aphelocona couch! and the same deer as at Jesus Maria, 
but from the palms and the Spanish moss and the large oak and walnut 
trees in the canons it was evident that this range which extends S and 
S along the eastern border of a small secondary valley (which is 
separated from the valley of San Luis by some low hills) and forms an 
intermediate range between the coast climate and the arid valley of 
San Luis, East of this range extending away for many miles is a 
broad open and fertile but rather arid plain apparently very similar 
to that west of the mountains. 
The season has again passed, for the third time in succession, 
without rain enough to make a crop. Deaths from a severe form of 
cholera mortus are very common among the very poor in s an Luis and it 
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