CHAPTER IX
THE PROVINCES AND LARGER TOWNS
Mexico city is no more Mexico than Paris is France or Vienna is Austria. The provincial life of the country is, in its way, a varied one. Although there is a distinct Mexican national type, provincial types also abound, each fairly distinct from the other; and this is, perhaps, to be accounted for by the fact that the various races of Indians who have amalgamated with the Spanish population in Mexico's several States appear to be widely different in origin as well as in language. Let us take a purview of the Mexican provinces, beginning at the north with Chihuahua, that storm-centre and nursery of revolutions, and working our way southwards, in criss-cross fashion jumping, as it were, from centre to centre on the map, and halting for a space at towns and localities where there is anything of notable interest only. Beginning, then, with Chihuahua, one of the largest States of the Union, and that to which the eyes of all those interested in Mexican affairs are turned at present, we find it but thinly populated and its great resources most imperfectly developed. American capital has been poured into Chihuahua, but the results so far have by no means justified the hopes of those who have invested their money in its mines and fields. A great part of Chihuahua is tierra templada, that is, temperate country, and very nearly cold in places, for some of it stands 7,000 ft. above the sea. It is cold in winter, but exceptionally warm in summer, and this heat is by no means improved by the pouring rainstorms which frequently visit it for days at a time. The town of Chihuahua itself is the very metropolis of dust at all seasons, and indeed the whole State is afflicted at times with regular siroccos of dust.
Of late years, mining has become one of the staple
