NATURE'S HAND IN MEXICO

A SKETCH OF THE GEOGRAPHY AND ITS EFFECT ON THE CLIMATE, THE PEOPLE AND THEIR INDUSTRIES

By WALLACE THOMPSON

Author of "The People of Mexico," etc.

Area and Extent: The vast cornucopia-like triangle of land which comprises the territory of Mexico lies south of nearly three-quarters of the southern boundary of the United States. Its western tip touches Southern California at the Pacific and its most easterly point is five hundred miles south of Pensacola, at the western end of Florida. For 1833 miles Mexico's northern border is contiguous to the United States, 693 miles eastward along arbitrarily marked lines from the Pacific Ocean to El Paso, Texas, and the remainder southeastward along the sinuous course of the Rio Grande to the Gulf of Mexico. Its jagged southern border is hardly four hundred miles long, touching Guatemala and British Honduras (Belize).

This cornucopia, grasping the Gulf of Mexico on the east like a great hand, swings southeastward from the Pacific contact with the United States until the most westerly point of the Guatemalan border is five hundred miles east of Mexico's easternmost contact with the United States on the north.

Set apart, as Mexico is by her boundaries, she seems in form much like a great peninsula, but she has, herself, two important peninsulas as part of her territorial extent and configuration. One is the Peninsula of Yucatán, which forms the eastern tip of the cornucopia, the thumb of the curving hand which grasps the Gulf of Mexico, an area of about 50,000 square miles. The other is the long, narrow peninsula of Lower California, with 58,343 square miles, extending directly south of the American state of California and connected with the Mexican mainland by only a narrow strip.

That mainland comprises, with the two peninsulas, 765,762 square miles, and the 1561 square miles of coastal islands under Mexican sovereignty bring the total area of the country up to 767,323 square miles. The greatest width of the mainland is 750 miles, and the greatest length is 1942 miles, from the northwestern tip of Lower California, where it joins the United States, to the southernmost point in the jagged Guatemalan border in the Mexican state of Chiapas. The narrowest point in Mexico is 120 miles, at the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, once discussed as the possible site of an interoceanic canal, and in the time of Diaz the route of a great trans-shipping railway between the Pacific and the Gulf of Mexico. The Atlantic (Gulf of Mexico) coastiine of Mexico is 1727 miles long, that of the Pacific (including the long border of Lower California) 4574 miles.

Lying between 32° 30' and 14° 30′ North Latitude and 86° 30′ and 117° Longitude west from Greenwich, the triangu

lar form of the Mexican territory places it about equally in the temperate and torrid zones. This is a primary factor in Mexican climate, but far more significant, indeed, is the contour of the country itself.

Mountains: The land is largely mountainous, for if we include the fertile tablelands, nearly two-thirds of the country is covered with mountain ranges. The Rocky Mountains of the United States, the great backbone of the Western Hemisphere, cross the Mexican border into Sonora, and almost immediately south of the international line begin spreading eastward. A long, slowly rising valley a hundred miles wide, continues southward from El Paso, narrowing rapidly, while to the eastward of this valley rises a new range of mountains, obviously a part of the great Rocky Mountain range, but unconnected with it in the United States and south, indeed, of the broad flat plains of Texas. This is the Sierra Madre Oriental, or Eastern Mother Range, the continuation of the Rockies in Sonora and Durango being called the Sierra Madre Occidental, or Western Mother Range. Further south, these two join together, and spread to virtually the whole. width of Mexico, excepting for the Gulf coastal plain, some three hundred miles wide, to the east. All of central Mexico is mountainous, flattened only by vast plateaus which, according to the accepted geological theory, were created by alluvial deposits and lava dust from the mountains which still rise above them. At the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, the Sierra Madre flattens out till, save for the relatively easy grades which climb from the Gulf and from the Pacific to the summit of the low divide (about three hundred feet above the sea) the mountains might be all but gone. The narrow plane of the Isthmus passed, the mountains rise again until the center of the great state of Chiapas is once more a vast plateau accented with towering peaks, a formation which continues southward through Central America, lowers again at Panamá, but joins directly, at last, with the South American Andes.

In this vast sweep of mountainous territory are hundreds of deep cañons or barrancas, great fertile plateaus, and many wonderful mountains. Of these last the snow-peaked volcanoes about the great Valley of Anáhuac, the site of Mexico City and for ages the center of Mexican government and population, are the most famous. Here are Popocatepetl (17,520 feet) and Ixtaccihuatl (16,960 feet), and to the eastward the still more beautiful cone of Orizaba (18,250 feet). Virtually at the same latitude, but far to the west, is Colima (12,991 feet) a still active volcano. Toluca (14,950 feet), close to the Valley of Mexico, Malinche (14,636 feet) in the state of Tlaxcala, the Cofre de Perote (13,400 feet) in the state of Vera Cruz, and Tancítaro (12,664 feet) are those of greatest height. Only the already great altitude of the plateaus of Mexico from which most of the striking

mountains spring keeps hundreds of others from the notice of travelers and geologists. The scenery which results from the mountainous formations of Mexico is literally unsurpassed, for Popocatepetl and Ixtaccihuatl can give the climber all the thrills of the Alps, and the crater lakes to be found in one or two sections of Mexico rival in splendor the more famous resorts of Europe.

The vast barrancas which mark the mountainous formation all through Mexico are magnificent to contemplate, but the day's journey down and up the sides of such a geological spectacle as the Barranca of Beltran brings home to even the amateur observer the terrific handicaps which these vast cuts put upon the industrial development of the country. Much of the conquering of these handicaps was achieved under the broad railway policy of President Diaz, and the work done still remains, but many years must now pass before the final conquest is achieved. Such a work as the building of the Colima branch of the Mexican Central, carrying a direct line for the first time. from the capital to the Pacific, will hardly be repeated when revolution threatens, for here, in less than one hundred miles, twenty great bridges had to be built, most of them crossing barrancas and cuts of geological formation, with virtually no streams filling them even in the rainy season. The Southern Pacific line from the northern border in Sonora lacks but sixty miles of linking up with the Guadalajara branch of the National Railways, but thirty of those sixty miles are through a mountainous territory, cut with deep barrancas, so that the cost of building will be close to a million dollars a mile.

Rivers and Streams: Such barrancas and valleys do not, moreover, indicate either great water-power or navigable streams. There is water-power in Mexico, to be sure, but it comes from two factors, the sheer drops which give wonderful power sites with tremendous heads of water, and the heavy torrential rainy season. But the streams themselves do not carry sufficient water the year around to justify any plant, and tremendous reservoir development is vital to any power-plant design. Such reservoirs have been built in various parts of Mexico, but at appalling expense, and with an added and unexpected element of failure— the porousness of much of the soil of Mexico. The mountains, indeed, are of igneous rocks, but underneath is often limestone, and more often still, in those places where a great impounding of water might be made with a relatively low and inexpensive dam, the soft, porous alluvial and volcanic-ash land with which the valleys have been filled.

This porous soil is a factor bearing on the absence of both great water-power and navigable streams. Even in the lowlands the streams run underground in Mexico, and while they can be tapped by shallow wells, they deprive Mexico almost entirely of the advantages of river transportation. Even the Rio Grande,

on the northern border, is useless for navigation most of the year. The Pánuco, at whose mouth is located the great oil center of Tampico, is navigable only a short distance above that port. The broad, rich coastal plain along the Gulf of Mexico is watered by tiny streams, all of which, excepting the partially navigable Papaloápam, are useless for steamers and even for launches most of the year. Not until we reach the Isthmus of Tehuantepec do we find a river worth considering for transportation. The Coatzacoalcos, at whose mouth on the Gulf of Mexico is Puerto Mexico, the eastern terminus of the Tehuantepec National Railway, furnishes a highway which made possible the relatively great development of American tropical plantations during the years of peace under Diaz. Its mouth was then the port of loading for great ships, but only by continual dredging was it kept open, and today the port is abandoned except for light-draft coasting ships. Further south, emptying into the gulf at Frontera, is the magnificent system of which the Grijalva and the Usumacinta are the chief streams. Here, indeed, have plied and in the future will ply great river steamers, for upon the banks of the Usumacinta, at least, are rich oil fields and the fairest farming land in all tropical Mexico. Both the Grijalva and Usumacinta are magnificent streams, and the latter is comparable, in its majestic volume, to the Mississippi itself. Only the bar at Frontera keeps them from being navigable to ocean steamers. For a brief period under President Madero this bar was dredged so that fruit boats could enter and go to the docks of banana farms, encouraging a promising industry which was killed by heavy taxation and government neglect of the dredging, under the revolutionary presidents of recent years. But this one system of rivers offers virtually all there is of navigation in Mexico-and they can serve but parts of two states, Tabasco and Chiapas.

Yucatán, the peninsula which separates the Caribbean Sea from the Gulf of Mexico, is virtually without rivers, the water from the abundant rainfall of its interior finding its way to underground streams in the porous underlying limestone.

On the west coast there are a few rivers. The most important is the Lerma, which waters a large territory on the Pacific side of the Continental divide, and allows some local transportation. The Balsas, in the states of Oaxaca and Guerrero, reaches far inland, but rapids and shallows make its use for navigation expensive and all but impossible. In Sonora is the Yaqui River, navigable for small boats and of some value for transportation. The Fuerte is also in this class.

Harbors: Another phase of the geography of Mexico which affects transportation is the complete absence of good natural harbors well located. The chief port of Mexico, Vera Cruz, has a harbor which was built artificially around a partially protected

bay. Tampico is a port solely because of the jetties which narrow the mouth of the Pánuco and, with the help of dredges, keep the channel clear. Puerto Mexico has a similar problem, but the smaller river makes dredging absolutely vital. Frontera is solely a dredging proposition, as the Usumacinta and the Grijalva, emptying together into the gulf, have formed a vast delta in the lowlands which can probably never be narrowed to take advantage of the vast volume of water which they pour out. Yucatán has literally no semblance of a harbor, and its great crops of sisal hemp are loaded from lighters at appalling expense.

On the Pacific, Acapulco has one of the ideal harbors of the world, completely landlocked, and open for medium-draft ships. But it is small, and moreover as yet almost inaccessible to any railway survey, although it was used by the galleons from Manila as a port for trans-shipment of the treasures of the Orient across Mexico to the galleons from Cadíz which came to Vera Cruz. Salina Cruz, the Pacific terminus of the Tehuantepec National Railway, was built from an open roadstead with two lines of jetties and sea-walls, a work which inattention has now all but ruined. Manzanillo, the terminus of the only direct railway line from Mexico City to the Pacific, was also built with sea-walls and was opened by dredges. Mazatlan, further up the coast, the chief port of the Southern Pacific Railway of Mexico, is still an open roadstead. Guaymas, the port of the State of Sonora, is accessible to only the light-draft ships.

These are all great natural handicaps, and have affected the life of Mexico probably more than it will be possible to estimate. The mighty and costly work of the Diaz régime in building harbors is a monument to that "materialistic" era which will last through many years and has already played a tremendous part in furnishing the sinews of revolution to succeeding governments, for without that work Mexico would be far from capable of sustaining herself in the reconstruction period of today.

Climate: But beyond all these factors of mountains and rivers and sea looms a yet greater problem, and still more far-reaching the problem of climate. As noted, Mexico lies in about equal parts in the temperate and torrid zones. But the geological zones are far more important, for climate is affected not alone by latitude, but by altitude as well. These geological zones are three, the hot country or tierra caliente, the temperate country or tierra templada and the (relatively) cold country or tierra fria. The hot country is the lowland section along the coasts from sea-level to 3000 feet altitude, where the mean annual temperature varies from 76° to 88° Fahrenheit. The Mexican terminology includes not only the lowlands of the torrid zone, but the whole coastal plain up to the northern border. The tierra templada lies along the mountain slopes and in the lower plateaus, between 3000 and 6500 feet altitude, where the tem