OAJACA, or Oaxaca, the chief town of the province of the same name in Mexico, lies 1600 feet above the sea in a beautiful valley on the left bank of the Atoyac, or Rio Verde, which reaches the Pacific after a course of about 170 miles. The city is surrounded by luxuriant gardens, orchards, and cochineal plantations; its streets are wide and regular, and among its public buildings are the cathedral, the bishop’s palace (fashioned after the type of a similar ancient edifice at Mitla), and the Dominican monastery and church. Chocolate, cigars, cotton-cloth, wax candles, <fcc., are manufactured. The population was 26,228 in 1877. The city, which dates from 1522, was visited by a severe earthquake in 1870.