ritory, the entire elevation of which last (14,300 feet) can, in some places, be taken in at a single glance from the sea-level and a water-foreground. The comparatively narrow and gently sloping strip of land which the traveler thus reaches on the Atlantic side in journeying from Mexico to Vera Cruz extends from the base of the great plateau to the ocean, and, with its counterpart on the Pacific side, constitutes in the main the so-called "Tierras Calientes" (hot lands), or the tropical part of Mexico. The average width of these coast-lands on the Atlantic is about sixty miles, while on the Pacific it varies from forty to seventy miles. Considered as a whole, the geographical configuration and position of Mexico have been compared to an immense cornucopia, with its mouth turned toward the United States and its concave side on the Atlantic; having an extreme length of about 2,000 miles, and a varying width of 1,100 miles (in latitude 25° north) to 130 miles at the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. Its territorial area is 139,700 square miles, or a little larger than that part of the United States which is situated east of the Mississippi River, exclusive of the States of Wisconsin and Mississippi; and this cornucopia in turn, as has been before intimated, consists of an immense table-land, nine tenths of which have an average elevation of from 5,000 to 7,000 feet. Such an elevation
