The dining room affords grand opportunity for the domestic artist. The bread board, bread and carving knife handles, salad fork and spoon, all offer employment to the carver’s tool, to say nothing of cabinet, sideboard and over-mantel. Tiles for tea pot rests and all sorts of china call for the decorator’s skillful brush, while tea cloths and coseys, doilies, mats, centerpieces and carving cloths all await the embroiderer’s needle.
Arise, my young readers, and take your tools in hand, for home work is the fairest adorning of the homelike house.
MEXICO.
Mexico is a country reaching from the Gulf on its eastern coast to the Pacific Ocean, almost 2,000 miles, with a breadth varying from 140 to 750 miles. The whole territory of Montezuma, at the time of the Spanish conquest, was not less than 1,600,000 square miles, more than one half of which has been obtained by the United States by purchase, enforced treaties, or otherwise. The plains on the coast are low, marshy, and in the summer and autumn malarial diseases are very prevalent. Strangers can visit the place with safety only about four months in the year, when severe northern gales cool the heated atmosphere and dissipate the seeds of disease.
There are 6,000 miles of coast line, but, considering its extent, it does not furnish many good harbors.
The main body of the land is an elevated plateau, traversed by chains of mountains, some of which are of extraordinary height. The eastern Cordillera, or chain, that runs nearly north from the initial point has an elevation of 6,000 feet, the western nearly 10,000. Traversing the longitudinal range, there are several cross ranges containing some of the highest volcanoes on the continent. They are all quiescent now, and none of them have been active during the present century. There are not many lakes, and none that are very large. The basins of some, though of sufficient extent, are so arid, and evaporation is carried on so rapidly that the water in them has, at times, quite disappeared. Neither are the rivers of much importance as thoroughfares. The Rio Grande, forming the boundary between Mexico and Texas, is the longest (1,500 miles), but navigable only for a short distance. Those in the mountain region are impetuous torrents, larger near their source than afterward, as they lose more by absorption, in passing through arid portions of the table-lands, than they gain by drainage, except in the rainy season. After plowing deep furrows, and cutting out immense ravines among the foot hills of the mountains, some are partly exhausted, drawn into reservoirs and canals constructed for purposes of irrigation, and spread out into sluggish bayous, of no great depth, before they reach the sea. The lack of navigable streams has been seriously felt.
Climate, other things being equal, decides the flora of a country, and in this respect Mexico has many advantages. Were the country level from the Gulf to the ocean, it would have mostly a tropical climate, and produce only the vegetation of the tropics. But, rising in successive stages to a height of 19,720 feet, the temperature changes with the elevation, and a large portion enjoys the climate of the temperate zones. The low lying region near the coast, called the “hot country,” has a rich soil, a humid atmosphere, and abundant rains, that perpetually nourish a rank tropical vegetation. At an elevation of 3,000 feet we reach a delightful zone where the extremes of heat and cold are unknown, the temperature ranging from fifty to eighty-six degrees. Here the forms of vegetable life, mingling those of the lower and upper regions, have a charming variety. Crossing this wide belt, with its luxuriance in things of surpassing beauty and usefulness, and advancing gradually till the mountains begin to show their rugged forms, at an elevation of 8,000 feet a colder climate is reached, with a corresponding change in the vegetation that now ranges from the corn, barley, and other useful cereals and hardier fruits to the cryptogamia of the mountain top. Take it all through, from coast to mountain, it is quite safe to say Mexico has a flora not excelled by any other country of the same dimensions. And it has increased with the advance of civilization. Many plants, flowering shrubs, and fruit-bearing trees that were not indigenous, but successive contributions from the Old World, have a vigorous growth, and produce abundantly. Apples, pears, peaches, cherries, oranges and grapes, with a variety of choice East India fruits, are widely distributed through the country. In the coast region, and to an elevation of about 1,500 feet, they have cotton, cocoanuts, cocoa, cloves, vanilla, nutmegs, peppers, and other spices of commerce, beside the fruits of nearly all tropical countries of the east and west. Higher up they have sugar, coffee, indigo, rice, tea, bananas, and an abundant supply of edible roots, such as yam, arrow-root, sweet potato, and all the fruits of America, Central Asia, and Barbary.
From a partial catalogue of the productions of the country there is evidence that its agricultural possibilities are very great. Nearly all fruits and grain, indeed, nearly all plants that grow, are either indigenous to the country or may find a congenial home within its limits. Some parts of the upland require irrigation to make them productive, and, if the dry season is prolonged, water must be stored in basins for the use of stock. The neglect of this, especially where the land has been long cleared, causes barrenness, and gives the country a desolate appearance.