part of persons employed in the cotton factory, the leading industry, shepherds and laborers on the adjacent farms.
Rising somewhere amid the heights which frown down upon the inoffensive village a stream of pure, sparkling water resolves itself into quite an imposing cascade, making, at one jump, a fall of perhaps fifty feet, thence flowing, broken and frothing, along its tortuous way through the pass. Here the stream is deflected from its natural bed into a ditch to furnish water-power for a cotton factory of one hundred looms, and having served this purpose, it is taken through irrigating ditches, and spread over the corn and wheat fields of the Saltillo valley. The falling stream is hemmed in on one side by the jagged gray rocks, which rise up, naked and solemn, to grand heights—speaking, in their stern silence, unutterable things.
On the other side, we beheld the verdure of the native grasses, which lent beauty and color to the landscape after the destitution of the bare scenery of our monotonous sixteen-mile ride, and a touch of gentleness to this otherwise rugged and awe-inspiring scene. My imagination readily saw in the crags and serried peaks the likeness to some towering cathedral, and I almost heard the chimes from its turret. In fancy the silent multitude passed in and out at the doors of this imaginary temple, to whisper their petitions, and then disappear in the deep recesses of the rocks.
It was through the Cañon de Palomas that General Minon, who commanded a wing of Santa Anna's cavalry during the American war, was sent to flank General Taylor, from the Agua Nueva, on the day of the battle of Buena Vista. Had General Taylor met with defeat, this cavalry force would have been in Saltillo almost as soon as Taylor's army.
The neighboring mountains are covered with extensive pineries, yielding large quantities of lumber, tar, pitch, and turpentine, which find a market near home.
The house of the hacendado, where we spent the day, was typical of all houses in the towns and villages—a plain adobe structure, low, flat, and with simple pounded, earthen floors. We had scarcely
