populous villages. The plain is now comparatively a desert, and two or three thousand miserable leperos build their mud huts and practice their thievish propensities upon the site of the holy city.
THE TERRITORY OF TLASCALA.
The history of Mexico has ever held in sacred regard the region of this ancient republic, whence Cortéz and the Spaniards derived such eminent assistance in the conquest of the Aztec Empire. Immediately after that event it was erected into a province, under which character it was always regarded until the political emancipation of Mexico from Spain, and even after that event up to the period of the adoption of the Acta Constitutiva, when Tlascala was raised to the dignity of a State, as an integral part of the