The caminos reales of New Spain — a wheeled road to Santa Fe, and no wheeled freight on it

Humboldt's chapter on the roads of New Spain, read from the page, describes a system: four principal roads out of the capital, a spine called el camino de tierra adentro running 440 leagues to Santa Fe, longitudinal roads easy to keep and arduous transversal ones to the coasts, community inns in the middle of the pueblos — and, beside a carriage route longer than the Alps, the admission that goods still moved on mules driven by mestizos and Indians because no wheeled freight existed.