Page:Six Months In Mexico.pdf/150

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148
SIX MONTHS IN MEXICO.

that the fighter's end had come, but just then the bull would gore him in the stuffed part, and the man would turn a complete somersault, alighting always on his feet, safe and sound. The bull would turn those men into all sorts of shapes without either hurting them or himself.

Puebla is considered the richest State in Mexico, and in it one can select any climate he desires. Puebla City is never cold, is never warm; it has the most delicious climate in the world, just the degree that must please the most fastidious. In the State are wonderful stone quarries. Every color of clay is used to make dishes, vases, and brick, and abundance of chalk for making lime. In the rivers and small streams several kinds of sand are secured, which is used for many purposes, and a few miles away are large veins of iron and other minerals; there are mountains of different varieties of marble and onyx, from the transparent to the heaviest known; extensive fields of coal, quicksilver, lead, with wonderful mines of gold and silver everywhere; there is one strange mountain called Nahuatt (star) covered with rock crystal, the fragments resembling brilliant diamonds, and at another craggy place beautiful emeralds are found. In many places are hot springs.

The woods are fortunes in themselves. Besides all the Mexican varieties are cedar, ebony, mahogany, pine, oak, bamboo, liquid amber, India rubber, and above all the writing tree, the wood of which has been pronounced the finest by five countries. Its colored veins are on a yellowish ground, and it forms thousands of strange figures, monograms, words and profiles. Then there are the silk cotton tree, the logwood and thousands of others. Some of them produce rich essences, others dyes which never fade. A cactus also grows here from which wine is made which they say far excels that of Spain or Italy. In the cold and warm districts are raised cotton, tobacco, vanilla, coffee, rice, sugar-cane, tea, wheat, aniseseed, barley, pepper, Chili beans, corn, peas, and all the fruits of the hot and cold zones. There are salt mines and land where cattle, horses, mules, burros, sheep, goats and pigs are raised on an extensive scale. The flowers are so varied and abundant that a gentleman who has been exploring the paradise says their products would supply all the drug