MEUM
250
MEXICO
Meun (or MErNc), Jean Ci.opin-ei, de, French port,
b. c. 1260 in tho little city of Mrunp-sur- Loire; il. ut
Paris between ISO") ami \:V20. Ho took the name of
his native city, but received from his contemporaries
the nickname C'lopinel (clopincr, to limii) he<'aiise he
was lame. 8uch nicknames were very coinmoii in the
Middle Ages and were used in lieu of patronymics, the
custom of which was not yet established. Jean de
Ah'un's social condition has been a much debated
ciuestion. It seems certain to-day that he was born of
well-to-do parents, received a very good education,
and, about KiOO, was a wealthy burgess of Paris, a
steady and pious man who enjoyed the esteem of his
fellow citizens and the friendship of many a noble lord.
He translated the "De re niilitari" of Vegetius, the
"De consolatione philo-sophia-" of Boethius and com-
posed in French verses a Testament in which he re-
proves women and the friars. His fame rests on a
work of his earlier years, the completion of the "Ro-
man de la Rose, which had been left unfinished by
Guillamne de Lorris. As it stood, the latter's work
wa-s a sort of didactic poem in which he used allegori-
cal characters to describe the forms, the phases, and
the progress of love. His aim seemed to have been to
compose a treatise on the art of loving for the use of
the noble lords and ladies of the thirteenth century.
"To the 4669 verses of his predecessor, Jean de Meun
added more than 18,000 and made the poem a sort
of cyclopedia of all the knowledge of the time. He
quoted, translated, and imitated all the writers then
known: Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Virgil, Ovid, Augus-
tine, Juvenal, Li\'>', Abelard, Roger Bacon. Of the
18,000 verses which he has written, it has been possi-
ble to assign 12,000 to their authors. All the charac-
ters became so many pedants who discoursed on all
sorts of topics, however remote they might be from the
subject: the origin of the state, the origin of the royal
power, instinct, justice, the nature of evil, marriage,
property, the conflict between the regular and the secu-
lar clergy, between the friars and the university, etc.
The book is full of attacks on all classes and duties of
society: the magistrates, the soldiers, the nobles, the
monks, tithes, feuflal rights, property. De Meun's
talent is vigorous, but his style is often cynical and re-
minds the reader of the worst pages of Rabelais.
Paris. Jean de Meun in Hist. liUrraire de la France. XXVIII (Paris, 1888), .•)91^29; Qoicherat, Jean de Meun el sa Maison a Paris in Bihl. de I'erole des chartes (Paris, 1860); Langlois, Oriffinea et sources du Roman de la Rose (Paris, 1890).
PlEKRE MaJRIQUE.
Mexico. — Geography. — The Republic of Mexico is sitiiated at the extreme point of the North American continent, bounded on the north by the United States, on the east by the fiulf of Mexico, the Caribbean Sea, British Honduras, and Guatemala, and on the south and west by the I'acific Ocean. It comprises an area of 767,00.5 square miles, with a population of 13,- 604,000, of whom 2,062,000 are whites or Creoles, 7,380,000 half-breeds or mestizos, 4,082,000 Indians, and about 80,000 negroes. Among the whites there are approximately 60,000 foreigners, the greater num- ber being North Americans, Central Americans, Spaniards, French, Italians, etc. The form of govern- ment is republican; its head is a president, who is elected every si.x years; the legislature consists of two bodies, .senate and chamber of deputies; and there is a supreme court. The republic is composed of twenty- seven .states, three territories, and a federal district. The territory of Quintana Roo, created in 1902, was a part of the State of Yucatan. The names of the states, with |)opulation, area in square miles, capitals and numberofj)eople, are given in the accompanying table.
The C'ordillera of the Andes which crosses the nar- row i.sthmus that unites the Americas, branches out into two ranges when it reaches the peak of Zempoal- tepec over (10,000 feet), in (he State of Oaxaca; the eastern branch terminates at the Rio Bravo (or Rio
Grande), in the State of Coahuila, and the western
branch extends through the States of Chihuahua and
Sonora iuid merges into the Rocky Mountain system
in the United ."states. In the Mexican territory the
two ranges are so closely vmited as to form almost a
State
POPULA-
Area
Capital
Popu-
lation
Jalisco
1,153,891
33,496
Guadalajara
101,208
Guanajuato
1,068,724
10.948
Guanajuato
63,263
Puebla
1,021,133
12,203
Puebla
93.521
Vera Cruz
983,030
29,283
Jalapa
20.388
Oaxaca
948,633
35,382
Oaxaca
35.049
Mexico
934.643
8,849
Toluca
25.904
Michoacan
930.033
22,656
Morelia
37,278
Hidalgo
605,051
8,575
Pachuca
37,487
S. Luis Potosi
575,432
24,000
San Luis Potosi
61,019
Federal District
541,516
579
Mexico
344,721
Guerrero
479,205
24.995
Chilpancingo
7,497
Zacatecas
462,150
24,457
Zacatecas
32,856
Durango
370.304
42,265
Durango
31,092
Ciiiapas
360,799
27,222
Tuxtla Gutierrez
10,982
Nuevo Le(5n
327,937
23,678
Monterey
62,266
Chiliuahua
327,784
89,974
Chihuahua
30.405
Yucatan
314,087
17,204
Merida
43,630
Coahuila
296,938
63,728
Saltillo
23,996
Sinaloa
296,701
27,552
Culiacan
10,380
Queretaro
232,389
4,492
Queretaro
- i3,152
Sonora
221,682
76,619
Hennosillo
10,613
Tamaulipas
218,948
31,758
Ciudod Victoria
10,086
Tlaxcala
172,315
1,594
Tlaxcala
2,715
Morelos
160,115
2,733
Cuemavara
9.584
Tabasco
159,834
10,072
San Juan Bautista
10.543
Ter. of Tepic
150,098
10,951
Tepic
15,488
Aguascalientes
102,416
2,964
Aguascalientes
35,052
Campeche
86,111
18,086
Campeche
17,109
Colima
65,115
2,172
Colima
20,692
Ter.ofLow.Cal.
47,624
58,328
La Paz
5,046
Ter. Quintana
Santa Cruz de
Roo
40.000
18,000
Bravo
1,500
compact whole, occupying nearly all the region from
ocean to ocean, forming the vast tablelands that ex-
tend from Oaxaca to Chihuahua and Coahuila, and
leaving but a narrow strip of land along the coast line.
On the eastern coast the land slopes almost impercepti-
bly to the Gulf, whereas on the western the descent is
sharp and abrupt. This accounts for the few good
ports on the Gulf side, and the abundance of harbours
and sheltered bays on the Pacific shore. The highest
peaks of these vast moimtain ranges are: Popocatepetl
(17,800 feet), Citlaltepetl, or Peak of Orizaba (17,000
feet), Ixtacihuatl ( Ifi.lOO feet). To this physical con-
figuration of the land, the absence in Mexico of any
wat^r systems of importance, is to be attributed. The
principal rivers, none of which carries a great volume
of water, are the Bravo, Panuco, and Grijal va, emptying
into the Gulf of Mexico, and the Mexcala, Santiago,
Mayo, and Yaqui, emptying into the Pacific. Very few
islands are to be found on the eastern coast of Mexico,
quite unlike the Pacific shore, which along the coast of
the peninsula of Lower California is dotted with small
islands. The four seasons of the year, common to
most countries, are unknown in Mexico, owing to the
entirely different climatic conditions. Common usage
has divided the year into two distinct seasons, the
rainy and the dry season, the former extending from
May to October. During this entire time there are
daily showers, which not infrequently are heavy
downpours. The other six months are dry, not a
drop of rain falling, at least on the tablelands. The
climate of the coast regions is always very warm, while
that of the tablelands is temperate. The phenom-
enon of frost in December and January on the table-
lands of Mexico, Puebla, and Toluca, situated at an
altitude of more than 6000 feet above the sea level, is
due not so much to extremes of climate as to the rarity
of the air causing a rapid condensation of the vapours.
Many of the native races which inhabited Mexico at
the time of the Conquest are still in existence ; the
principal ones are: the Mexicana, Aztaca, or Nahoa,
in the .States of Mexico, Morelos, Jalisco; the Tarasca,
or Michoacana, in the State of Michoacan; the Otoml
in San Luis Potosf, in Guanajuato and Queretaro; the
Opata-Pima, in Sonora, Chihauhua, and Durango; the
