stream. When we saw it, its waters were very low; it joins the great river of Lerma, or Santiago, near Sălămāncă, in conjunction with which it pursues its course towards the Pacific.
Zĕlāyă, by the census of 1825, contains only 9,571 inhabitants; the streets are drawn, as usual, at right angles, and the houses in the centre of the town are well built; the suburbs are poor and miserable; but the great Plaza, one side of which is occupied by the church of El Carmen, and the other by the convent of San Francisco, is really fine, and does credit to the taste of the architect (a native Mexican) by whom it was designed.
The Băxīŏ, so celebrated in Mexico, both as the seat of the great agricultural riches of the country, and the scene of the most cruel ravages of the Civil War, commences between Qŭerētărŏ, and Zĕlāyă. I saw it under great disadvantages, for the country was parched up by long continued drought, and it is probably owing to this that it was so far from answering my expectations. I had pictured to myself a succession of Haciendas, abundantly supplied with water for irrigation, and consequently smiling with verdure; and I was not a little disappointed at finding that the masses of cultivation, however considerable in their aggregate, were still lost in the immensity of the surrounding space; and that the country wore the same dull livery of dust which gives so monotonous a character to the scenery throughout the Table-land. Between
