vallies, plains or low lands; and produces corn, wheat, barley, chile, maguey, beans and all the hardier, together with some of the southern fruits and plants. The wheat flour of Puebla is celebrated for its excellence, and has sometimes been exported to Havana and South America.
In the neighborhood of Oajaca cochineal is sometimes produced; and on the low lands towards the western coast, cotton, rice, and small quantities of coffee and sugar are cultivated. The Llanos de Apam, in the neighborhood of the State of Mexico are celebrated for their fertility, and especially renowned for the excellence of the pulque, produced from the maguey or Agave Americana.
Nearly four-fifths of the real property of Puebla either belongs or is hypothecated to the church and to hospitals, and consequently the agriculture of the State is not as well managed as if the land belonged to independent farmers, who derived their wealth directly from the soil. Great poverty prevails among the lower classes, and their sad condition is generally attributed in Mexico to the mismanagement of real estate by the clergy.
The water power in the neighborhood of the city of Puebla has given a stimulus to manufactories, and the reader will find in our chapter upon that branch of Mexican industry some interesting statistical facts showing the progress made by the inhabitants of this portion of the Republic.
The only river of any importance in Puebla is the Rio de Tlascala or Papagallo, which rises in the table lands, and runs southerly from the village of Ayútla to the Pacific. The Pascaqualca, Tacunapa, Tecoyama, and the San José are insignificant streamlets along the coast.