The State of Puebla is remarkable for producing a fine quality of wheat, and also for its heavy yield of other cereals. One may look in vain elsewhere for better apples, pears, peaches, and plums than are offered in the public market of this attractive town, all of which are grown in its immediate vicinity. Articles of embroidery were offered at one of the open stands in the market-place fully equal to the Fayal product so well known in Boston. The very low price demanded for fine linen handkerchiefs and napkins, representing days of patient labor on each, showed how cheaply these native women estimate their time. They will follow the most intricate design which may be given to them as a pattern, reproducing it with Chinese fidelity, and with as much apparent ease as though it were their own conception. It seemed to us, as we examined this delicate product, that art needlework could hardly go further as to perfection of detail. This work is not that of dainty fingers and delicate hands, educated and taught embroidery in some convent school, but the outcome of very humble adobe cabins, and the instinctive artistic taste of hands accustomed to the severe drudgery of a semi-barbarous life. It was found that the sales-people, when they first receive these goods from the natives, are obliged to wash and bleach them thoroughly, they are so begrimed, but they know very well how beautifully the work will prove to be executed, and gladly purchase it even in this soiled condition.
For so restricted a territory, Puebla contains a great aggregate of valuable resources,--a rich and extensive coal-mine near by on the ranch of Santa Barbara, inexhaustible stone-quarries on the hill of Guadalupe, abundant deposits of kaolin close at hand for the manufacture of porcelain ware, a sufficient supply of material for making lime to last a hundred years, an iron mine within eight or ten miles which employs a large foundry, running night and day; while the neighboring foothills are covered with an almost inexhaustible supply of good merchantable wood. Certainly, no city in Mexico is better situated as to natural resources. The state is so located as to embrace a great variety of climate. In the north it produces wheat, corn, and other cereals, also affording grazing ground to immense herds of domestic animals, while in the south it yields liberal crops of cotton, tobacco, sugar, rice, and a great variety of fruits, together with many rich and beautiful cabinet and dye woods. Truly, this is a record which few localities can equal in any zone.