Between Queretaro and Celaya the traveller gradually descends from the table-lands, and the air comes upon him with a warm tropical breath. Nopalos, or prickly-pears, line the road; the Indians collect the fruit—which is savoury and invigorating—with a forked stick. At Silao striking evidence of the geniality of the climate is supplied by the variety of fruit exposed for sale: oranges, lemons, grapes, chirimoyas, batatas, platanos, plantains, cumotes, grenadillas, mamayos, tunas, pears, and apples—a list which would have delighted Keats’s Porphyro when he was preparing a refection for his lady-love Madeline. But if fruit be abundant, so are beggars and thieves; and Silao is not a comfortable place to live in! Mexico, according to its climatic conditions, is divided into three great divisions—the _Tierras Frias_, or Cold lands; the _Tierras Templadas_, or Temperate lands; and the _Tierras Calientes_, or Hot lands. From Celaya our travellers stooped down rapidly into the _Tierra Caliente_, and the increased temperature was every day more perceptibly felt. Jalisco, the most important town on their route, is situated on the western declivity of Anahuac, a Cordillera which unites the Andes of South and Central America with the great North American chain of the Rocky Mountains. Mr. Ruxton describes the table-land on the western ridge of the Cordillera as blessed with a fertile soil and a temperate climate. It is studded with the populous towns of Silao, Leon, Lagos, and Aguas Calientes. The central portion, of a lower elevation and consequently higher temperature, produces cotton, cochineal, vanilla, as well as every variety of cereal produce. While the littoral, or coast region, teems with fertility, and lies in the shadow of immense forests, unfortunately it is cursed by the ever-prevalent vomito, or yellow fever, and its climate is scarcely less fatal to its inhabitants than to strangers.