r red or yellow, twenty miles southeast of Leon and two
hundred and thirty-eight north of the national capital, we reach the
small city of Silao, in the State of Guanajuato, which has a population
of about fifteen thousand. This is an agricultural district, six
thousand feet above the level of the sea, where irrigation is absolutely
necessary, and where it is freely applied, but by hand power, the water
being raised from the ditches by means of buckets. Under this treatment
the soil is so fertile as to yield two crops of wheat and maize
annually, besides an abundance of other staples. The eyes of the
traveler are delighted, on approaching Silao, by the view of
far-reaching fields of waving grain, giving full promise of a rich
harvest near at hand. We were told that these fields were flooded twice
during the growing of a crop: first, early in January, when the young
plants are two or three inches high, and again soon after the first of
March, just before the ear is about to develop itself. Sometimes, as is
done in Egypt, the fields are inundated before sowing. Some of the
richest soil for wheat-growing in all Mexico lies between San Juan del
Rio and Leon. The idea of a rotation of crops, the advantages of which
the intelligent American farmer so well understands, does not seem yet
to have dawned upon the Mexican cultivator of the soil. He goes on year
after year extracting the same chemicals from the earth, without using
fertilizers at all, and planting the same seed in the same fields. By no
happy accident does he substitute corn for oats, or wheat for either. He
never thinks of giving his grain field a breathing spell by planting it
with potatoes or any other root crop, and substituting a different style
of cultivation. In and about the town are some large and admirably
managed gardens of fruits and flowers. One was hardly prepared, before
coming hither, to accord to the Spanish character so much of
appreciation and such delicacy of taste as are revealed through the
almost universal cultivation of flowers in Mexico, wherever
circumstances will admit of it. Silao is just fifteen miles from
Guanajuato, the capital of the state, with which it is connected by
railway.

The rainfall is comparatively very slight on the entire Mexican
plateau, limited, in fact, to two or three months in the year, which
renders irrigation a universal necessity to insure success in farming;
but the means employed for the purpose, as we have see