Santa Rosalia.--Mineral Springs.--Chihuahua.--A Peculiar City.-- Cathedral.--Expensive Bells.--Aqueduct.--Alameda.--Hidalgo's Prison and his Fate.--Eulalia.--A Large State.--A Grand Avenue of Trees.--Local Artists.--Grotesque Signs.--Influence of Proximity to the United States.--Native Villages.--Dangerous Sand-Spouts.--Reflections on Approaching the Frontier.-- Pleasant Pictures photographed upon the Memory.--Juarez, the Border Town of Mexico.--City of El Paso, Texas.--Railroad Interests.--Crossing the Rio Grande.--Greeted by the Stars and Stripes 343 AZTEC LAND. CHAPTER I. Locality and Political Divisions of Aztec Land.--Spanish Historians.-- Boundaries.--Climate.--Egyptian Resemblances.--Products of the Country.--Antiquities.--Origin of Races.--Early Civilization.-- Pictorial Writings.--Aboriginal Money.--Aztec Religious Sacrifices. --A Voluptuous Court.--Mexican Independence.--European Civilization introduced by Cortez.--Civil Wars.--The Maximilian Fiasco.--Revival of Mexican Progress.--A Country facing on Two Oceans.--A Native Writer's Statement.--Divorce of Church and State. Bordering upon the United States on the extreme southwest, for a distance of more than two thousand miles, is a republic which represents a civilization possibly as old as that of Egypt; a land, notwithstanding its proximity to us, of which the average American knows less than he does of France or Italy, but which rivals them in natural picturesqueness, and nearly equals them in historic interest.