Toluca.--Queretaro, Guanajuato, and Zacatecas.--Fresnillo.--"Romancing."--A lucky Priest.--San Luis Potosi.--The Valenciana at Guanajuato.--Under-mining.--A Name of Blasphemy.--The Los Rayas.--Immense Sums taken from Los Rayas.--Warlike Indians in Zacatecas. A stage runs daily from the city of Mexico by Tacubaya and the Desierto to the beautiful valley and city of Toluca. This town is greatly indebted for its present celebrity to successful mining adventures. Its Cathedral is a monument of the munificent liberality of the Frenchman Laborde, whose fortune was ever unequal to his generosity. We have spoken already of the almost Oriental magnificence displayed in the famous garden which he built and adorned at Cuarnavaca. After spending the wealth acquired from the _bonanza_ of Tasco, he started off in search of new adventures and a new fortune. Being again successful, he made Toluca the beneficiary of his princely liberality. The celebrated Cathedral of that city, and all its ornaments, are the proofs of his munificence. When his third fortune was exhausted, the fickle goddess forsook him, and he who had three times been raised from nothing to the condition of a millionaire, came in his old age to the archbishop for relief from his poverty. This relief he obtained by selling the jewels he had once bestowed upon the Church. Such often are the vicissitudes in the life of a successful miner. I can not notice here the many interesting objects gathered as I would wish to do, nor have I space for a description of the beautiful mountain scenery about Toluca. MIDDLE STATES OF MEXICO. The middle states of Mexico, Guanajuata, Zacatecas, Durango, and San Luis, are deserving of a more extended notice than my limited space will permit. There is little of war or romance to recount in the history of any of them. Their story is made up of notices of silver mines, and times of great _bonanzas_ and cattle-raising. Here the population is mostly white, made up of the hardy peasantry from Biscay. The Indians on the high table-lands were too hardy to be reduced to slavery: the result is the same here as in Chili. The two races have not extensively intermixed, as the Indians were driven northward, where, for a period of three hundred years, they have, in a measure, maintained their independence, and have so much improved in the art of war that they are able to return again and fight for the homes of their ancestors. The white inhabitants of these states are more cleanly in their habits, and more industrious than the Southern people. The little state of Queretaro has little to boast but its agriculture, but to the north of it is a country of mines and pasturage.