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undertook a very fatiguing excursion to the Hill of Xochicalco, or the House of Flowers, one of the most remarkable monuments of ancient art in the country, and which Humboldt was unable to visit. The sketch which a half-hour's survey has enabled the Writer to give, is just sufficient to whet curiosity, and to excite the wish that subsequent travellers, not unprovided with a sketching pencil, may be enabled to explore the locality more thoroughly.

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The most interesting antiquities of Mexico, however, are those of nature. In excavating a canal, in part of the great plain, from which the waters have for centuries been gradually retiring, the workmen, at four feet below the surface, came to an ancient causey, supported by cedar piles; and three feet below the edge of this work, in what may have been the very ditch, they struck 6 upon the entire skeleton of a mastodon, embedded in the blue clay.' Many of the most valuable bones were lost by the careless manner in which they were extricated; but sufficient remained to prove that the animal was of enormous bulk; the diameter of the tusk measuring eighteen inches. Numerous remains of this huge animal are found in the valley, wherever extensive excavations have been made; and they supply our Author with the ground for a very romantic and picturesque conjecture.

'I could not avoid putting many isolated facts together, and feeling inclined to believe, that this country had not only been inhabited in extremely remote times, when the valley bore a very different aspect from that which it now exhibits, or which tradition gives it, but that the extinct race of enormous animals, whose remains would seem, in the instance I have cited, to be coeval with the un-dated works of man, may have been subjected to his will, and made instrumental, by the application of their gigantic force, to the transport of those vast masses of sculptured and chiselled rock, which we marvel to see lying in positions so far removed from their natural site.' p. 139.

Few travellers are better qualified to draw a comparison or contrast between the great mountain formations of Europe and the New World, so far as the Mexican Cordillera affords a fair specimen of the scenery of the Andes. The lines of just comparison are, Mr. L. remarks, very faint; and between the details chiefly characteristic of either chain, no similarity exists.

In the limestone, slate, and granitic ranges of the Alps, beauty of outline is far from being confined to any single ridge. It is an attribute of the secondary, as well as the most elevated;-of the parallel chains, as well as of the diverging mountains, which, like ribs, start out from the great back-bone of the continent, and sink gradually to the level of the plains on either hand. Piled, range behind range, with deep vales between,-with numerous lakes ;-and clothed up to the very limit of eternal snow, with green or forested slopes,-they

are eminently picturesque; and the gentle luxuriance of the lower valleys, contrasts felicitously with the precipitous rocks and masses of snow, which occupy the higher regions. The scale and the structure of the Alps, permit the eye to command, in almost every situation, the whole of their varied detail. The enormous extent of the glaciers on the upper plains and acclivities, and the peculiar manner in which they descend towards the valleys, are mainly characteristic of these mountains.

'Now as to general outline, both from what I have seen, and have heard with regard to other parts of the Andes, that of the great porphyritic chains of the Cordillera can hardly be said to be generally picturesque. It is scarcely broken enough; its details are too vast. One enormous wall of mountains rises behind another, each buttressing a broad step of table-land, but in general the interval between them is far too great for the eye to command more than one at a time. Here and there, from the general level of the undulating mountain ridge, rises a tremendous cone, with a breadth of base, and an even smoothness of outline, which, at the same time that they proclaim its origin, and add to its sublimity, take from its picturesque beauty. The summit bears its mantle of snow; but, compared with the mass, it is but a cap,-not a flowing mantle, with its silver and purple folds, and its fringe of ice.

There are again, for the reason stated, few positions in which your eye will command at the same time, the rich and gorgeous vegetation of the lower slopes of the Mexican Cordillera, and the sublimity of the superior ranges. The vast sheets of the barren Table-land are interposed; the tierras templadas separate the calientes from the frias. Each have their peculiar characteristics, but they can seldom, if ever, be comprised in one and the same picture.

You look in vain among all the exuberant forest-growth and the giant flora of Mexico, for the sweet cheering freshness of Alpine vegetation;-that luxuriance without rankness, which clothes the lower valleys.

From this you will see, that where the two chains might be supposed to have points of resemblance, they have little or none.

Besides that, in the style of its vegetation, both in the torrid and temperate regions,-the plains and their peculiar characteristics,the prodigious barrancas, the whole series of volcanic phenomena, which pervade the country, from the sands of the coast, to the craters of the highest volcanoes; as well as in the colouring,-the more prominent features of Mexico are so marked, and so utterly different, that they extinguish the idea of comparison.' pp. 289–291.

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Surely,' remarks Mr. Latrobe, there is not on the face of 'the earth a country more highly favoured by nature than New Spain -a title, however, by which we have ceased to recognize the country. 'You can hardly name a mineral product which it ' does not hide within its bosom, or a vegetable one, of whatever zone, which it might not, under proper management, be made to bring to perfection in one part or another of its various sur

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face. Yet, how little has man hitherto done to improve these 'advantages! Very true; almost as little as in Jamaica. The fate of Mexico, in this respect, is not peculiar; and lamentable as may be the effects of the present unsettled political state of the country, and of the constant struggles of parties for the mastery, we have yet to learn, upon better evidence than our Author has adduced, that Mexico was in any one respect better circumstanced under the paternal government of Spanish viceroys. We have a cordial respect for Mr. Latrobe, but we do not attach the slightest value to anything he says bearing upon political subjects. He is an honest, bigoted, old-school tory, who sneers at reform governments, prefers the manly tone of the Georgian slaveholders to the manners of the Yankees, and thinks the negroes less to be pitied? than their excellent and humane masters. What renders his statements still more liable to suspicion, so far as they relate to Mexican politics, is, that he had just come from the United States, was upon the best possible terms with the American chargé d'affaires, and found himself debarred from all access to the interior of Mexican society. With this preliminary explanation, we shall lay before our readers his account of the state of political affairs at the time he was in Mexico.

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‹ Santa Anna, a man of but little genius or talent, but cleverer than those about him in the low arts of intrigue, and into whose well-laid traps more than one old associate had fallen, was at the head of the reform government as president. The preceding year, General Duran had attempted to get up an unsuccessful revolution in favour of the so-called privileged classes." " This year Canalizza had run off to the eastward in the manner I have described; and, under what patriotic cry I forget, had issued a Pronunciamiento, proposing to set up a counter-government, according to the custom of the country. If I mistake not, General Bravo was down to the south-west, with the same intentions. The vice-president, Gomez Ferias, was at couteau tiré with the president; and the latter had, under the veil of leave of absence from the capital, for the restoration of his health, gone off in a very bad humour, to pout at his estate near Jalapa ; where the general belief was, that he was brewing some mischief of his own, in favour of the army and the church, both of which were decidedly under a cloud in the actual state of things. The latter especially began to tremble for its wealth, which the necessitous Federacion considered in the light of a lawful prize.

‹ The surmise was right, as the event showed; for, not long after, the wily president himself was pleased to set up his " bark," and abjuring the reform party, on whose shoulders he had climbed to power, made a run for the capital, beat his old friends, and throwing himself into the arms of the " privileged classes," was again elected president.

'Since that time, another " grito" has been given by the Zacatecanos, who revolted again, under favour of that pet cry of the giddy

multitude in the age in which we live-reform !-and getting together six thousand civicos or militia, and thirty-two pieces of artillery, defended their city. Santa Anna's star again prevailed; and he beat them also. Durango then gave him a little more trouble; and now Texas, with its unruly colonists, has called him to the north. He may chance to hear some other dog "barking" in the capital before he gets back. Is not this laughable?' pp. 153, 154.

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Extremely laughable, no doubt; a fit subject for jest! Our Author proceeds to tell us, that the more enlightened party, 'who were desirous of introducing into Mexico the policy of the "United States,' were in disgrace, their chiefs exiled, and themselves under the surveillance of the party in power. Moreover, in proof of the disorganized state of society in the capital, he tells us, that assassinations were frequent, and that thousands of drunken and gambling leperos lay about the churches and piazzas. That such things are disgraceful to a Republican, or to any other Government, who will deny? Yet Mr. Latrobe might have recollected that Humboldt, who visited Mexico under the old regime, represents the social condition of the lower classes as presenting a picture of extreme misery; and in the capital, the leperos were reckoned at nearly a fourth of the population! Assassinations and robberies may have increased in consequence of the obstinate revolutionary contest which for twelve years laid waste the country; but there never was a time, we believe, in New Spain, any more than in Old Spain, when there was not ground for complaint on this head. Naples will match Mexico in the number of its leperos, and the States of the Church in that of its robbers and assassins.

As Mr. Latrobe has referred to the party conflicts and changes of government which have agitated the Republic, we wish that he had informed himself how far foreign interference and intrigue had been instrumental in fostering them. The American chargé d'affaires could, if he had been so disposed, have given him some curious information upon this point. There is a certain Mr. Poinsett, the Author of the "Notes on Mexico," who, if not greatly belied, has had no small share in the mischievous machinations which have had for their object to promote the selfish policy of the United States; playing over again, as minister in Mexico, the same deep game of intrigue that, as American consul, he had played at Santiago de Chile.

And as Mr. Latrobe has referred to the affairs of Texas, we should have been glad, though it is perhaps more than we could expect from him, that he had let his readers a little into the secret of the origin and nature of the insurrection in that province. Secret, indeed, it is not, that the American land-jobbers and slave-jobbers, with their friends in Congress, have long had their hearts set upon obtaining the cession of Texas from the

VOL. XVI.-N.S.

Mexican Government, either by purchase, by intrigue and cajolery, or, these having failed, by organizing an insurrection which might serve as a pretext for a forcible occupation of the territory. The plans for this have long been laid; and the refuse of the United States, under the name of Texians, have at length deemed matters ripe for setting the Mexican Government at defiance. The disastrous capture of Santa Anna, (April 21,) of which the newspapers will have informed our readers, has led to an armistice between the American and the Mexican forces; but whether this will lead to any accommodation seems extremely doubtful. On the one hand, the annexation of Texas to the United States is openly discussed in Congress, at Washington; while recent advices from Mexico inform us, that the Mexican authorities are equally determined to carry on the war thus basely provoked, and to send reinforcements to the main body of their army, which has suffered no reverse. The issue we will not venture to predict; but not only is justice on the side of the Mexicans: every friend to humanity must wish them success. That our readers may thoroughly understand the state of the case, they must be informed, that Texas belongs to a Republic which has abolished slavery; and that the importation of slaves from Cuba, which the American slave-traders have been long carrying on in defiance of all laws, human and divine, through the Texian territory, is, by the laws of Mexico, piracy. The object of the Americans is not only to secure the means of continuing this atrocious trade, but also to make this immense territory the field of slave cultivation, and a market for the slave-holders of Maryland and Virginia. Not only so; but, by annexing Texas to the Union, which is the ultimate object, divided into three or more States, the preponderating influence of the Southern or slaveholding States in Congress will be secured, and the Empire "State of New York, with all the North, may be set at defiance.

Such is the deep-laid and atrocious project which is the real origin and cause of the pretended struggle for Texian Independ ence. Happily, there are still found some patriotic and enlightened statesmen in the American Congress, to denounce the infamous proceeding, and to point out the danger which attends it.

The New York Commercial Advertiser contains the sketch of a speech delivered in Congress by Mr. John Quincy Adams, Ex-President of the United States, a few paragraphs of which we shall transfer to our pages, as supporting, by evidence that will not be disputed, the above representation.

• What did we see now in Texas? Why, Americans fighting for the re-establishment of slavery within that state where it had been abolished. He repeated the question: did not every man who heard him know, although the house had not seen fit to grant him the document by which he could establish the fact, that the war raging in

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