apital, and is destined, with the opening of the
railroad to Tampico, which has so recently taken place, to grow rapidly.
Its tramway, or horse-car, service is particularly well managed, and
facilitates all sorts of transportation in and about the city. In the
Sierra near at hand are the famous silver mines known as Cerro del
Potosi, which are so rich in the deposit of argentiferous ore that it is
named after the mines of Potosi in Peru. There are valuable salt mines
existing in this State of San Luis Potosi, at Penon Blanco. The city has
always been noted as a military centre, and a large number of the
regular army are stationed here. When Santa Anna returned from exile, at
the beginning of the war with this country, in 1846, it was here that he
concentrated his forces. When defeated by General Taylor at Buena Vista,
he marched back to San Luis Potosi with the remnant of his thoroughly
demoralized army, where he again established his headquarters. On the
Sabbath, as in other Mexican cities, the grand market of the week takes
place, when cock-fighting, marketing, praying, and bull-fighting are
strangely mixed.

About a hundred miles south of Aguas Calientes we reach the important
manufacturing city of Leon, State of Guanajuato, a thrifty, enterprising
capital, containing over ninety thousand inhabitants. It is considered
the third largest and most important city of the republic. We have now
come eight hundred and thirty miles since leaving the International
Bridge, by which we entered Mexican territory at Pedras Negras, and find
ourselves in the midst of a fertile, well-watered plain, intersected by
the small river Turbio, two hundred and sixty miles northwest of the
city of Mexico. Rich grazing fields are spread broadcast, many of which
exhibit the deep, beautiful green of the alfalfa, or Mexican clover,
which is fed in a fresh-cut condition to favored cattle, but not to
burros, poor creatures! They feed themselves on what they can pick up by
the roadside, on the refuse vegetables thrown away in the city markets,
on straw; in short, on almost anything. There is a theory that they will
live on empty fruit tins, broken glass bottles, and sardine boxes; but
we are not prepared to indorse that. The fields and small domestic
gardens hereabouts are often hedged by tall, pole-like cacti of the
species called the organ cactus, from its peculiar resemblance to the
pipes of an organ. This forms a prevailing picture in the wild la