tobacco and coffee raised in their vicinity. The same district produces the best Vanilla, as well as the Jalap, and Sarsaparilla, which have been mentioned amongst the exports of Veracruz. A few Indian villages are scattered over this rich country, in every part of which but little exertion is required on the part of man in order to draw a subsistence from the exuberant fertility of the soil. Immense forests occupy the intervening spaces, abounding in every variety of timber, but rarely visited, except by the Indians, at the season for collecting the crop of Vanilla: they are watered by the streams which descend from the slope of the Cŏrdĭllēră, and produce, during the greatest part of the year, the fruits of the Tropics in such profusion, that Victoria subsisted upon them almost entirely, during the eighteen months which he passed there, without seeing a human being. There are many indications of their having possessed a much larger population at the time of the Conquest, as the ruins of towns, and fortifications, have been discovered, which could only have been raised by very numerous Tribes: but, like every thing connected with the Indian race, their history is wrapped in obscurity, and with regard to some, not even a tradition now remains.
Jălāpă is indebted to the peculiarity of its position for the extreme softness of its climate. The town stands upon a little platform 4,335 feet above the level of the sea, and would consequently be even more exposed than the Encerro to the North-west
