d, however, that
this is an unusual price; for the muleteers have been so victimised by
their mules being seized, either by the government or the rebels (one
seems about as bad as the other in this respect), that they must have a
high price to pay them for the risk. Generally seven reals, or 3s. 6d.
per arroba of 25 lbs. is the price. This salt is evaporated in the
salinas of Campeche, taken by water to Tuzpan, and then brought up the
country on mules' backs--each beast carrying 300 lbs. Of course, this
salt is very coarse and very watery; all salt made in this way is. It
suits the New Orleans people better to import salt from England, than
to make it in this way in the Gulf of Mexico, though the water there is
very salt, and the sun very hot. The fact, that it pays to carry salt
on mules' backs, tells volumes about the state of the country. At the
lowest computation, the mules would do four or five times as much work
if they were set to draw any kind of cart--however rough--on a
carriageable road. It is true that there is some sort of road from here
to Tampico, but an English waggoner would not acknowledge it by that
name at all; and the muleteers are still in possession of most of the
traffic in this district, as indeed they are over almost all the
country.

It was mid-day by this time; and, as we could not get to the Rio Grande
without taking our chance for the night in some Indian rancho, we
turned back. The heat had become so oppressive that we took off our
coats; and Mr. Christy, riding in his shirt-sleeves and holding a white
umbrella over his head, which he had further protected with a turban,
declared that even in the East he had not had so fatiguing a ride. We
passed through Soquital, and there the natives were idling and drinking
spirits as before, and seemed hardly to have moved since we left. This
plateau of Atotonilco el Grande, called for shortness Grande, is, like
most of the high plains of Mexico, composed mostly of porphyry and
obsidian, a valley filled up with debris from the surrounding
mountains, which are all volcanic, embedded in reddish earth. The
mountain-torrents--in which the water, so to speak, comes down all at
once, not flowing in a steady stream all the year round as in
England--have left evidences of their immense power in the ravines with
which the sides of the hills, from their very tops downward, are
fluted.

These fluted mountain-ridges resemble the "Kamms" (combs) of the Swiss
Alp