Page:Mexico (1829) Volumes 1 and 2.djvu/511

MEXICO. trict of Matehuala, which is now a thriving town, with seven thousand inhabitants, created by the discovery of Catorce ; while about the same time, (the latter part of the last cen- tury,) Durango rose into importance from the impulse given to the surrounding country by the labours of Zambrano, at San DTmas and Guarisamey. Its population increased in twelve years, frim eight to twenty thousand; while whole streets and squares were added to its extent by the muni- ficence of that fortunate miner. To the extreme North, Santa Eiilalia gave rise to the town of Chihuahiia ; Bato- pilas, and El Parral, became each the centre of a little circle of cultivation ; Jesus Maria, is, at the present day, producing a similar effect; MapimT, Cuencame, and Indee, (a little more to the Southward,) served to dev elope the natural fer- tility of the banks of the river Nazas ; while in the low hot regions of Sonora and Cinaloa, on the Western Coast, almost ■ every place designated in the map as a town, was originally,, (and generally is still,) a Real, or district of mines. Such was the case with Alamos and Ciiliacan, and Cosala" and e1 Rosario ; and such will be found to be the case with an infinity of other towns and villages scattered over the ter- ritory of the Mexican Republic, which, but for the mines, never would have existed at all. When once formed, these establishments, as Humboldt very justly observes, often sur- vived the mines which gave them birth ; and turned to agri- cultural labours, for the supply of other districts, that indus- try which was at first devoted solely to their own. Some, however, are so unfavourably situated as necessarily to follow the fate of the mines ; in which case their population goes to swell that of the nearest district where there is a demand for labour, but might easily be diverted into more distant chan- nels, were the advantages held out sufficiently great to com- pensate the difficulties of the removal. An examination into the sources of the wealth of the prin- cipal families of the Mexican nobility will confirm what I