templada, and fria, or the hot, temperate, and cool land. The hot zone comprises the seaboard, and goes up the mountains to a certain height. The vegetable kingdom develops here a luxurious wealth, under the influence of heat and moisture. Everything grows more richly on the eastern slope, because the trade-winds prevail, and bring with them all the moisture they have collected in their long journey over the surface of the ocean. In this zone, what are called the tropical productions are cultivated. Unfortunately, this zone has two scourges: the fellow fever, which rages principally in the vicinity of the Atlantic ports, being favoured by extensive swamps, which science, however, could easily drain, and myriads of troublesome or poisonous insects, which are a torture to man. Half way up the table-land, and above this coast range, is the temperate zone, in which the thermometer varies but slightly through the year, and an eternal spring prevails. This delicious region is the finest at Xalapa, and in the neighbourhood of the town of Chimpalcingo, where the first congress assembled during the War of Independence. Here none of the plagues of the hot zone are known, and the pure air of the plateau is inhaled without being exposed to the sudden changes of temperature and the sharp winds, which are dangerous to people with weak chests. The temperate zone is a terrestrial paradise so long as there is sufficient water, as is the case at Xalapa and other spots, where the eternal ice of such mountains as the Peak of Orizaba, the Cofre de Perote, &c., feed the springs throughout the year.

Above the temperate zone lies the cool one, the most extensive of the three. It derived its name from the first settlers, men from Andalusia, who were reminded by it of the rather rough climate of Castile. An Englishman who settled there would be enchanted by the mild climate. In the capital, and on a great portion of the plateau, the annual average is 17 deg. Cent., or a little less than Naples and Sicily, and precisely the same as the average temperature of the three summer months in Paris. The variations between the warmth of the seasons are much slighter than in the most favoured European countries. In the season which may be called winter, the quicksilver does not fall below 14 deg., and in the greatest heat it does not rise above 26 deg.

Owing to the terrace formation of the soil and the varieties of temperature produced by it, Mexico combines the most heterogeneous productions, not alone in its different provinces, but in the neighbourhood o. the same town. Four valleys at different elevations lie around Mexico. In that of Istla the sugar-cane is cultivated, in that of Actopan cotton, in that of Tenochtitlan corn, in that of Toluca the agave, or Mexican aloe, the vine of the ancient Aztecs, whose fermented juice is still preferred by the Indians to all other beverages. If Mexico possessed railways, only so many as are found in the smallest states of the Union, it would be possible to see within a few hours the most varied climatic phenomena. On a route no longer than from London to Brighton, the traveller would pass from corn to sugar-cane, from the poplar and ash to the palm-tree, from the giant cypress to the numerous trees with evergreen leaves, which are peculiar to the hottest countries in the world. In riding from Mexico to Cuernavaca, a distance of forty miles, the route would commence with a vegetation resembling that of Paris, and terminate with plants that flourish in Cuba or Domingo. Even at present

a journey from Mexico to Vera Cruz is a source of extraordinary pleasure. The road runs first through pine-forests, which look to the tra veller like Europe, through olive-gardens, vineyards, corn and maize fields, alternating, however, with patches on which cactuses flourish and agaves are tended. Farther on are some orange-trees, planted by the Spaniards, and whose fruit forms mounds in the market-place of the capital. Cotton bushes, which are indigenous, and of whose pods the Indians wove their clothes, and even made breastplates through which no arrow passed; the cactus on which the cochineal insect lives, bananas, coffee-trees, sugar-cane, and indigo, which have all been imported, and flourish magnificently; lianas which supply vanille, cocoa-trees from whose nuts the finest chocolate in the world is prepared, and, lastly, a great number of trees with sweet and fragrant fruits.

If the surface of the ground so amply repays human industry, its interior is no less rich. Up to 1848 Mexico, among all the countries of the world, produced the largest amount of the precious metals, but since then it has been surpassed by California and Australia, where silver is found in addition to gold. Still, it is the fault of man and not of nature that Mexico has lost its former rank. Permanent disturbances and revolutions injure no trade more than that which is connected with the finding of the precious metals, for it is most profitable to tax and plunder it.

Immediately after the discovery, the Mexican mines did not enjoy the reputation of the Peruvian. In Peru, a few years after the bold enterprise of Almagro and Pizarro, a silver vein was discovered, whose wealth has become proverbial. The wonderful mine, whose name of Hatun Potocchi the Spaniards converted into Potosi, has supplied silver of a value exceeding one hundred and fifty millions. Under Montezuma and his predecessors the Aztecs certainly worked a few silver veins, but only those in which pure silver was met with. Cortez found among them more gold than silver, because the former metal is found in a solid state, while silver forms so intimate a connexion with sulphur, antimony, arsenic, that it requires the practised eye of a metallurgist to detect it. At the beginning of the eighteenth century the production of the Mexican gold and silver mines did not amount to more than one million of our money. Fifty years later it had risen to nearly three millions, and in the first years of our century it exceeded five millions, of which nine-tenths were silver. This amount has been once more nearly reached, after the prevailing disorders had impeded mining operations for a long time.

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The number of silver veins in Mexico is extraordinary, the majority being found on the western slope. The entire side of the cordillera which slopes down to the Gulf of California consists of stone, through which silver is spread. Large quartz strata rise above the surface, and in these silver is obtained. The veins are less rich than extensive. Beta Madre, near Guanaxuato, is, on the average, five-and-twenty feet thick, at some places one hundred and fifty, and it runs for a distance of ten miles. But here not more than from four to six pounds of silver are obtained from two thousand pounds of ore. Still, the mass of ore is so enormous, that a very fair profit is derived from the operation.

As regards position, the Mexican mines are far superior to the Peruvian.

The latter are surrounded by ice. A height of twelve thousand feet above the sea is considered a trifle in that country, and at Potosi the works are at an elevation equal to the peak of Mont Blanc. Everything around is mournfully desolate, and great expense and fatigue is connected with the transport. The Mexican mines rarely lie higher than six thousand feet. Those of Valenciana and Rayas, in the vicinity of Guanaxuato, have an exquisite climate, and border a country where everything is produced for the nourishment of the miners and the very numerous mules employed in transport.

A Mexican miner, Bartholomeo Medina, who is still awaiting his monument, invented, in 1557, the method, which is employed up to the present day, of separating silver. It is what is called cold amalgamation, based on the employment of quicksilver and other less expensive stuffs. As the metal can thus be procured from poor veins without smelting, this process is a perfect blessing for regions poor in wood. It admits, at the same time, of silver works on a large scale, in which, however, a great deal of quicksilver is consumed. One pound of quicksilver is expended in obtaining two pounds of silver. Hence it results that plenty of cheap quicksilver is a condition for working a mine to a profit. In the Spanish age the Mexican mine-owners continually urged the government of Madrid to supply them with quicksilver at a moderate price. Spain derived the most of that metal from the Almaden mines, and large masses were annually exported to Mexico. In 1777 so much was effected by the continued petitioning, that quicksilver was sold at two shillings a pound. When Spain, after the Mexican declaration of independence, let the Almaden mine, a pound of quicksilver cost in Mexico from five shillings to six shillings, according to the situation of the silver mine. Under these circumstances, the discovery of rich quicksilver mines in California was greeted with the liveliest joy by the Mexicans. These mines of New Almaden are situated in one of the finest and most fertile valleys, no great distance from San Francisco, and are worked with North American energy. They already yield more quicksilver than all the European mines together, and their owners declare that they can supply as much quicksilver as may be ordered. It is hoped that the price of a pound of quicksilver will soon be reduced to fourteenpence in San Francisco, and nothing more is required to give a mighty impulse to the Mexican silver works.

At the beginning of the present century the great Humboldt wrote: "In the Andes chain there is so much silver that, on thinking of the number of veins which have not been touched as yet, one inclines to the belief that the Europeans have as yet scarce enjoyed the inexhaustible source of wealth which the New World contains. Europe would be flooded with silver if all the resources of the mining art were employed in working simultaneously the mines of Bolanos, Batopilas, Sombrerete, Rosario, Pachuca, Moran, Zultepec, Chihuahua, and many others which formerly had a well-merited reputation." Another well-informed observer, Dupont, who travelled forty years after, says: "The veins which have been in work for the last three centuries are as nothing when compared with those still left to work. Sooner or later the time will come when the production of silver will know no other bounds but those entailed by the sinking value of the metal."

THE LAST NEW EMPIRE.

The most gold is found in Sonora. The North Americans are aware of this fact, and on several occasions filibusters from California (Walker, Count Raousset Boulbon, &c.) have undertaken unsuccessful expeditions into that province. In 1862 the Federal government was tempted to buy this region for eleven millions of dollars, and the bargain was not carried out solely through the unfavourable state of the times. Corwin, the American ambassador in Mexico, had already arranged that Mexico should pledge to the Union, in return for this sum, the still unsold estates of the clergy, and all lands belonging to the republic not yet disposed of. This universal mortgage was to be employed in getting hold of Sonora. As regards gold, this province is a continuation of California.

To all these natural advantages must be added that of geographical position. Mexico is situated between Europe and Asia, and can attract a considerable share of the ever-increasing intercourse between the two hemispheres. Chemin Dupontes, one of the first French statisticians, asserts that the imports and exports of Europe with the lands on the great ocean amounted at the beginning of this century to 410 million francs, but in 1860 to 2500 millions. The trade of France with these Asiatic regions has risen from 50 to 92; that of the United States from 59 to 239; that of England from 195 to 1960 millions of francs. In Mexico the two oceans come very near each other. On the isthmus of Tehuantepec the breadth of the continent is only one hundred and sixty miles. From Vera Cruz, viâ Mexico, to Acapulco is only about the same distance as from Paris to Bordeaux. Farther north, towards Durango, the distance increases to seven hundred and fifty miles. Of all the interoceanic points of junction which are under consideration, that of Tehuantepec is most northern, and consequently the best adapted for the United States and Europe. A railway could be made here without any excessive difficulty. As the Guazacoalco, as soon as its bar has been reduced, can be navigated by all vessels, the twenty-five miles from the mouth to Minatitlan will be saved. In 1842 the concession for a railway was granted by the President Santa Anna to Don Jose Garay. The faithlessness of the Mexican government, as the Americans say, or the jealousy between the traders of New York and New Orleans, as the Mexicans declare, caused the failure of a plan whose originators were North Americans. Careful measurements and calculations have been made, however, and it is hence known that the greatest elevation to be surmounted (on the plateau of Tarifa) is six hundred feet, and the entire expense of the line will not greatly exceed eight and a half million dollars. The North Americans have made a road from sea to sea, for they still hoped that Mexico would accept their offer of fifteen million dollars for the sovereignty of the isthmus.

We wished to prove what an enormous field lay open for the of the new emperor. Whether he will find in Mexico the men who will energy follow his appeal to useful and pacific action, we do not purpose to examine. The past offers no hopes but it might happen that Mexico, like its Spanish mother country, wearied of civil wars, may accept a regular government.

THE VIRGIN FOREST.

ONE of the richest and least known portions of South America is the enormous triangle, whose base, resting on the eastern watershed of the Andes, descends by terrace after terrace, till at last it disappears in the waters of the Atlantic at the promontory of St. Roque. A single empire -Brazil-occupies this space, to which the two largest rivers in the world, the Amazonas and the Parana, are at once the frontier and the entrance. Although the habitation of this region commenced centuries ago, it still deserves the name of the Mato Virgem, or virgin forest, which the comrades of Cabral gave it. For the traveller the virgin forest is divided into three belts: that of the inns, that of the plantations, and that of the uninhabited primeval forest. The first is the smallest, and ends at a short distance from the large seaboard towns and the provincial capitals. It cannot be travelled through with any great amount of pleasure—at least not by the European, who never grows accustomed to the smells produced in the inns by salt fish, spirits, and negroes, and the myriads of insects.

It is capital travelling in the zone of the plantations. If the visitor has but one letter of introduction to a planter, he is recommended by him to another, and everywhere meets with the most friendly reception. You travel by short stages from plantation to plantation, see something new every day, and hardly anywhere feel a privation of European comforts. If, however, led astray by the demon of curiosity, you venture into the forests of the interior, you must take leave of all reminiscences of civilisation. Even the footpaths soon disappear, and you must either go up the rivers in an Indian canoe, or cut a road with a bowie-knife through the impenetrable scrub and thorn-bushes. At night you take shelter in a deserted hut, or hastily make a refuge of branches. The food is limited to manioc-flour, and white beans with a little bacon. When this stock is exhausted, the traveller is thrown on the produce of his gun and the forest fruits.

If a visit to the virgin forest is to terminate well, a suitable season must be selected. In the south of Brazil, the months from May to October are the most favourable. This period is an eternal spring, such as is seen on the finest days in Provence and Italy. The cold nights and fresh mornings make up for the sultry heat of the day. So soon as the sun returns to its austral path, the atmosphere becomes oppressive, and the sky incandescent. The continuous rains that fall till April and evaporate in the hot sunbeams cover the soil with a dense veil of mist. In this moisture the smallest parasitical plants attain an unheard-of development. After resting for two or three days at a plantation and looking up your boots again, you find them covered with a perfect vegetation

of whitish mould.

To this steaming atmosphere are joined electric phenomena, which also acquire an extraordinary force. In the six months of the rainy season, every day is announced by a splendid morning. At nine o'clock the sun is beginning already to burn, and everybody returns to the house with the exception of the black labourers. About noon, the tops of the