74

FRUIT

AGRICULTURAL PROSPECTS.

mittees of encouragement, and although the trees have most generally grown well, it is to be feared that the enterprise resembled the wild speculations in that species of mulberry which, about the same period, both made and lost so many fortunes in the United States. The cultivation of silk has been warmly urged by Don Lucas Alaman, as exceedingly suitable for the state of Oajaca, where, in the course of time, it may replace the cochineal whose product it is said is beginning to fail in that district.

FRUITS.

The finest fruits of Mexico are commonly found in the tierra caliente. The orange, lemon, lime, pine apple, banana, chirimoya, sapote, ahuacate, tuna, granadita, are produced in great perfection. The apples, peaches, cherries, grapes and gooseberries do not possess the high flavor, nor are they found in the same varieties, as in the United States; but the pears, especially those known as Gamboa pears, are exceedingly delicious. Nearly all these fruits are consumed in their natural state, yet immense quantities are preserved and form the extraordinary varieties of dulces without which no Mexican table is considered properly set forth. It is very probable that if horticulture and agriculture were scientifically studied by Mexicans, or if North American and European gardeners were to emigrate to the country, even the fruits which are now inferior to ours, would improve in quality, size and flavor under their skilful management.

AGRICULTURAL PROSPECTS.

From all that we have already stated in regard to the Indian or laboring population of Mexico, the nature of the seasons, and the want of irrigation in many districts, except by artificial means, it will be perceived that the agricultural progress of the country is extremely doubtful. In addition to this, the land belongs to a few proprietors, many of whom own estates of twenty, thirty, forty, fifty, and even a hundred leagues square, which are chiefly devoted to herds instead of agriculture. Mexico is thus rather in the pastoral than the commercial age, and must pass through the transition state of independent sub-divided labor before she can stand, naturally, upon the same platform with northern and European nations.

The early Spanish settlers were eager monopolists of mines and land. Their object was to realize fortunes speedily; and by a liberal repartimiento of Indians they were enabled to found large estates upon which those Indians either toiled as husbandmen or

GRAZING AND NOT AN AGRICULTURAL COUNTRY.

75

tended uncounted herds. The prolific soil soon yielded, with little labor, the required quantity of vegetables and cereal products; domestic markets were wanted for the sale of the surplus, and the Spanish government did not open its harbors for exportation. Agriculture was thus early limited to the mere animal wants of the glebæ adscripti and emigrant Spaniards, and as the Indian never labors except when compelled by force or necessity, he soon preferred the idle and wandering life of a herdsman to that of a farmer. Many of these estates now number from ten to twenty thousand head of cattle. Besides this the Spanish laws presented the Indian no prospects of independent agricultural rights. The foreign landholder enjoyed the exclusive ownership of the vast freehold. There was no encouragement or hope given to small farmers who might emerge from the servile race, and the consequence is that Mexico, until she becomes an exporting country, receives an augmented population by immigration, and sub-divides her immense territorial manors, under the demands of trade, will, in all likelihood remain stationary in every thing pertaining to agriculture. It is the multiplication of freeholders under the stimulus of commerce, that promotes freedom, industry, and personal independence. Competition is continually excited by the wants of a numerous nation, or by the prospect of selling the results of our labor to others abroad who are not so well supplied or do not produce the articles we cultivate and manufacture. But Mexico, as at present constituted, is an exceedingly small white civilized nation, if we exclude her four and a half millions of Indians. She is not increased annually by immigration from the crowded countries of the Old World, nor does she encourage the advent of strangers. Her population therefore is substantially confined within the narrow limits of natural increase by birth alone. These singular facts exhibit the anomalous condition of all the Spanish settlements upon the virgin and inviting soil of America; and until the Chinese exclusiveness of these various western nations is abandoned as an absurdity in the nineteenth century, we do not believe that the Arab plough will be replaced by the civilized implements of North American agriculture, or that the Mexican shepherd will turn into an enlightened farmer. We have seen that even the stimulus of domestic demand for cotton, has been unable to produce a new agricultural class among those who were devoted to other traditionary toils. What hope, then, can there be of an improvement in cereal cultivation, when the country is already supplied, and owns neither a navy nor merchantmen?

CHAPTER VI.

REFLECTIONS ON EMIGRATION-ADVANTAGES OF AMERICA-LAND AND LABOR. MINES WROUGHT BY AZTECS MINING DISTRICTS AND EXTENT IN MEXICO. -ERRORS AS TO EARLY SUPPLY OF METALS FROM AMERICA-TRUE PERIOD OF ABUNDANCE MINES NOT EXHAUSTED- CONDITION-FAMILIES ENRICHED. EFFECT OF MINING ON AGRICULTURE. RELATIVE PRODUCT OF SILVER FOR TEN YEARS

TABLE OF PRODUCT

YIELD OF

THE MINES SINCE THE CONQUEST. COINAGE 1844 - TOTAL COINAGE 1535 to 1850.

MEXICAN MINES, MINERAL WEALTH AND COINAGE.

Ir is generally supposed that the mineral wealth of America was one of the most powerful stimulants of the Spanish conquest and subsequent emigration; nor is the idea erroneous if we recollect the manner in which the Castilian power was founded on this continent and the colonial policy it originated. It will be seen by the tables annexed to this section, that the results have largely fulfilled the hopes of the European adventurers, and that the wealth of the world has been immensely augmented and sustained, by the discovery of our Continent. In the order of the earth's gradual development, under the intellectual enterprise or bodily labor of man, we find the most beautiful system of accommodation to the growing wants or capacities of our race. Space is required for the crowded population of the Old World, and a new continent is suddenly opened, into which the cramped and burdened millions may find room for industry and independent existence. The political institutions of Europe decay in consequence of the encroachments of power, the social degradation of large masses by unjust or unwise systems, or the enforced operation of oppressive laws, and a virgin country is forthwith assigned to man in which the principle of self government may be tried without the necessity of casting off by violence the old fetters of feudalism. The increasing industry or invention of the largely augmented populations of the earth, exacts either a larger amount or a new standard of value for the precious metals, and regions are discovered among the frosts and forests of a far off continent, in which the fable of the golden sands of Pactolus is realized. The labor of men and the flight of time

strip commercial countries of their trees, yet, in order to support the required supply of fuel, not only for the comfort and preservation but also for the industry of the race, the heart of the earth beneath the soil which is required for cultivation, is found to be veined with inexhaustible supplies of mineral coal.

The bounty and the protective forethought of God for his creatures is not only intimated but proved by these benevolent storehouses of treasure, comfort and freedom; and whilst we acknowledge them with proper gratitude, we should not forget that their acquirement and enduring possession are only to be paid for by labor, economy, and social as well as political forbearance.

We do not think these observations out of place in a chapter devoted to the mineral wealth of Mexico. The subject of property and its representative metals, should be approached in a reflective and christian spirit, in an age in which the political and personal misery of the overcrowded masses of Europe, is forcing them to regard all who are better provided for, or more fortunate by thrift or the accident of birth, as enemies of the poor. The demagogue leaders of these wretched classes, pushing the principle of just equalization to a ridiculous and hideous extreme, have not hesitated to declare in France, since the revolution of February, 1848, that "property is robbery." We shall not pause to examine or refute the false dogma of a dangerous incendiary. The common sense as well as the common feeling of mankind revolts at it. Property, as the world is constituted by God, is the source of new industry, because it is, under the laws of all civilized nations, the original result of industry. "It makes the meat it feeds on." Without it there would be no duty of labor, no exercise of human ingenuity or talent, no responsibility, no reward. The mind and body would stagnate under such a monstrous contradiction of all our physical and intellectual laws. The race would degenerate into its former savage condition; and force, instead of its antagonists, industry and honest competition, would usurp the dominion. of the world and end this vicious circle of bastard civilization.

And yet it is the duty of an American, who, from his superior position, both in regard to space in which he can find employment and equal political laws by which that employment is protected, stands on a vantage ground above the confined and badly governed masses of Europe, to regard the present position of the European masses not only with humane compassion, but to sympathize with that natural feeling that revolts against a state of society

"La propriete c'est le vol." Prudhon.

78

MINES

WROUGHT BY AZTECS.

which it seems impossible to ameliorate, and yet whose wants or luxuries do not afford them support. It is hard to suffer hunger and to see our dependants die of starvation, when we are both able and willing to work for wages but can obtain no work upon which to exercise our ingenuity or our hands. It is frightful to reflect, says Mr. Carlyle, in one of his admirable essays, that there is hardly an English horse, in a condition to labor for his owner, that is deprived of food and lodging, whilst thousands of human beings rise daily from their obscure and comfortless dens in the British isles, who do not know how they shall obtain employment for the day by which they may purchase a meal.

To this dismal account of European suffering, the condition of the American continent affords the best reply. The answer and the remedy are both displayed in the social and political institutions, as well as in the boundless unoccupied and prolific tracts of our country. Labor cries out for work and recompense from the Old World, whilst the New displays her soil, her mines, her commerce and her trades, as the best alms that one nation can bestow on another, because they come direct from God and are the reward of meritorious industry. Before such a tribunal the modern demagogue of continental Europe shrinks into insignificance, and the laws of labor are effectually vindicated.

The MINES OF MEXICO have been wrought from the earliest periods. Long before the advent of the Spaniards, the natives of Mexico, like those of Peru, were acquainted with the use of metals. Nor were they contented with such specimens as they found scattered at random on the surface of the earth or in the ravines of mountain torrents, but had already learned to dig shafts, pierce galleries, form needful implements, and trace the metallic veins in the hearts of mountains. We know that they possessed gold, silver, lead, tin, copper and cinnabar. Beautiful samples of jewelry were wrought by them, and gold and silver vases, constructed in Mexico, were sent to Spain by the conquerors, as testimonials of the mineral wealth of the country. The dependant tribes paid. their tributes to the sovereign in a species of metallic currency, which though not stamped by royal order, was yet the representative of a standard value. The exact position of all the mines from which these treasures were derived by the Aztecs is not certainly known at the present day, but as the natives were often compelled to indicate some of the sources of their riches to the conquerors there is little doubt that the present mineral district of the republic is that from which they procured their chief supplies.