r for six or eight mills which
manufacture sugar, cotton, and flour. The situation is about midway
between Vera Cruz and Puebla, on one of the two principal routes from
the former port to the city of Mexico. The surrounding valley is quite
fertile, and is mostly devoted to the raising of coffee, sugar, and
tobacco. The climate is said to be very fine all the year round, the
average temperature being 74 deg. Fahr. in summer and rarely falling below
60 deg. at any season, though it seemed to us, who had just come from the
higher table-land, to be about 90 deg.. The scenery is that of Switzerland,
the temperature that of southern Italy. It affords an agreeable medium
between the heat of the lower country towards the Gulf and the almost
too rarefied atmosphere of the high table-lands of Mexico. "In the
course of a few hours," says Prescott, "the traveler may experience
every gradation of climate, embracing torrid heat and glacial cold, and
pass through different zones of vegetation, including wheat and the
sugar-cane, the ash and the palm, apples, olives, and guavas."

In this vicinity one sees the orange, lemon, banana, and almond growing
at their best, while the coffee, sugar, and tobacco plantations rival
those of Cuba, both in extent and in the character of their products.
While Spanish rulers were still masters here, and when all manner of
arbitrary restrictions were put upon trade, the cultivation of tobacco
was confined by law to the districts about Cordova and Orizaba. There is
no such handicapping of rural industry now enforced, and sugar and
tobacco, which are always sure of a ready market where transportation is
to be had, are engaging more and more of the attention of planters. It
was found that the best of sugar-cane land, that is, best suited for a
sugar plantation, could be had here for from thirty to forty dollars per
acre; superior for the purpose to that which is held at one thousand
dollars per acre in Louisiana. Though cotton is grown in about half the
states of Mexico, the states of Vera Cruz and Durango are the most
prolific in this crop. The plant thrives on the table-land up to an
elevation of about five thousand feet above the level of the Gulf, and
according to Mexican statistics the average product is about two
thousand pounds to the acre, which is double the average quantity
produced in the cotton-growing States of this Union. The modes of
cultivation are very crude and imperfect, especially at an