The administrations are governed by intendants, who are officers of high rank, and always Europeans.
The longitude given is from the meridian of Paris.
In the general view of New Spain,[IV'-14] I shall take some notice of the manners, customs, political force, etc., of the viceroyalty; but, as I do not pretend to be correctly informed as to that quarter of the kingdom, and there have been so many persons who have given statements on those heads, I shall confine my observations principally to the internal provinces through which I passed, and on which I made my observations.
INTERNAL PROVINCES.
1. New Mexico. [Geography. The province of New Mexico] lies between lat. 30° 30´ and 44° N., and long. 104° and 108° W., and is the most northern province of the kingdom of New Spain. It extends northwest into an undefined boundary, is bounded north and east by Louisiana, south by Biscay and Cogquilla, and west by Senora and California.[IV'-15] Its length is unknown; its breadth may be 600 miles; but the inhabited part is not more than 400 miles in length and 50 in breadth, lying along the river del Norte, from lat. 37° to 31° 30´ N.; but in this space there is a desert of more than 250 miles.
Air and Climate. No persons accustomed to reside in the temperate climate of lat. 36° and 37° N. in the United States can form any idea of the piercing cold which is experienced on that parallel in New Mexico; but the air is serene and unaccompanied by damps or fogs, as it rains but once a year, and some years not at all. It is a mountainous country. The grand dividing ridges which separate the waters of the rio del Norte from those of California border it on the line of its western limits, and are covered, in some places, with eternal snows, which give a keenness to the air that could not be calculated upon or expected in a temperate zone.
Timber and Plains. The cotton tree [Populus] is the only tree of this province, except some scrubby pines and cedars at the foot of the mountains [and many other species there and elsewhere]. The former borders the banks of the rio del Norte and its tributary streams. All the rest of the country presents to the eye a barren wild of poor land, scarcely to be improved by culture, and appears to be only capable of producing sufficient subsistence for those animals which live on succulent plants and herbage.
Mines, Minerals, and Fossils. There are no mines known in the province, except one of copper situated in a mountain on the west side of the rio del Norte, in lat. 34° N. [see [note26, p. 637]]. It is worked, and produces 20,000 mule-loads of copper annually. It also furnishes that article for the manufactories of nearly all the internal provinces. It contains gold, but not quite sufficient to pay for its extraction; consequently it has not been pursued.
There is, near Santa Fe, in some of the mountains, a stratum of talc, which is so large and flexible as to render it capable of being subdivided into thin flakes, of which the greater proportion of the houses in Santa Fe, and in all the villages to the north, have their window-lights made.