lage, containing about three thousand
inhabitants. Some parts of the ancient walls still remain, and are
composed of alternate strata of brick and clay.

Six leagues south-west from Tlascala, and in the midst of a delightful
valley, watered by a river which runs south-west to the Pacific Ocean,
stands _Puebla_, the capital of an intendancy, and the see of a bishop.
It is a large and regularly built manufacturing town, notorious for the
profligacy of its inhabitants.

_Cholula_, once a sacred Indian town, to which pilgrimages were
frequent, but now a mean village, is not far from Puebla. This place is,
at present, remarkable only for a curious monument of antiquity, a
pyramid which consists of four stages, and is about one hundred and
seventy-seven feet in perpendicular height, and one thousand four
hundred and twenty-three feet at the base. Its structure appears to
consist of alternate strata of bricks and clay. In the midst of this
pyramid there is a church, where mass is, every morning, celebrated by
an ecclesiastic of Indian extraction, whose residence is on the summit.

Eastward of the intendancy of Puebla is that of _Vera Cruz_. This
district is enriched with various natural productions, extremely
valuable both in a commercial and economical view. The sugar-cane grows
here in great luxuriance: chocolate, tobacco, cotton, sarsaparilla, are
all abundant; but the indolence of the inhabitants is so great, and all
their wants are so easily supplied, by the natural fertility of the
soil, that the country does not produce one half of what, under good
management, it might be made to produce. The sugar and cotton
plantations are chiefly attended to; but the progress made in these is
not great.

The chief city of the province is _Vera Cruz_; a sea-port, the residence
of the governor, and the centre of the Spanish West Indian and American
commerce. This city is beautifully and regularly built; but on an arid
plain, destitute of water, and covered with hills of moving sand, that
are formed by the north winds, which blow; with impetuosity, every year,
from October till April. These hills are incessantly changing their
form and situation: they are from twenty to thirty feet in height; and,
by the reflection of the sun's rays upon them, and the high temperature
which they acquire during the summer months, they contribute much to
increase the suffocating heat of the atmosphere.

The houses in Vera Cruz are chiefly built of wo