but they tend to increase more rapidly than others of the Spanish American countries, or at least in some of the Republics, for the native women are prolific, and mortality is low, due to the comparatively easy conditions of life and the beneficence of Nature. In some districts illegitimacy, both among whites and Indians, is very marked, and the economic condition in a modern sense is a low one. Primary education is generally compulsory, the Governments generally making considerable parade of educational intentions, but, withal, only a small proportion of the population can read and write. Naturally this is true mainly of the Indian and lower class mixed race.
As to food, this is mainly such vegetable products as maize, beans and bananas, and at times jerked meat. Excessive drinking is a frequent attribute of all Spanish American folk of the working classes, and it is not in the financial interests of their masters to stint the supply of liquors, the fiery aguadientes or spirits, which are so remunerative a product of the sugar-cane plantations, possessions of the large landowners frequently. The Indians are generally a peaceful folk, however, except when under the influence of liquor, and they have many good qualities, which it is time should now be more beneficently and wisely fostered by those in whose hands their destiny so greatly lies.
The Central American States are dowered, as regards Nature, with almost everything that could make a people happy and prosperous. The varying elevations of their lands above sea-level afford every variety of climate, and consequently of food product and industrial material. They can enjoy their own beef and corn, produced in their highlands, or, descending to the torrid strip of their coasts, gather coffee, cocoa, bananas, oranges, sugar-cane, and a variety of fruits which tempt both the eye and the palate. As for their minerals, the precious metals of gold and silver in the hills could provide sufficient for their uses and to spare, the baser for manufactures. The timber of the forests is rich and varied, the fibrous plants are of innumerable uses.
The noble landscapes which open to the view, of wooded mountains and majestic peak, of romantic river valley, and the blue line of the tropic sea, are such as might well bring out those attributes of the poet and the artist which exist in the Spanish American mentality.
In brief, there are here, in each State, the elements of a quiet and pleasing existence, far, it is true, from the world's more ambitious centres, but nevertheless capable of producing peace and plenty. Alas! however, for the unsettled temperament which cannot yet assimilate the bounties of Providence in such method as shall ensure their equitable enjoyment.
CUTTING SUGAR-CANE IN CENTRAL AMERICA.
Vol. I. To face p. 96.
To the foreign traveller, Central America might afford an extremely pleasing field of travel. There is a charm in the remains of the prehistoric American cultures, the carved walls of the old temples, the buried idols, the ancient industries. Restful and quaint are these little towns with the stamp of the Spanish Colonial architecture. Here man and Nature soon forget the bloodshed and the enmity of the torn and stained pages of history. The simple folk of the countryside are full of courtesy, the needs of life are cheap and plentiful, for the earth is bountiful. All these are elements which impress themselves upon the mind of the traveller here.
This, then, is Central America, that region so slightly known to the world outside that, as elsewhere remarked, its very geographical position is often a matter of doubt. But, in the future—it may be distant—it cannot be doubted that, with its advantages, the region must play a more important part in the developing world.
Three Latin American island-Republics enclose the Caribbean Sea and Spanish Main to the north: those of Cuba, Hayti, and Santo Domingo, upon which, however, we cannot here dilate at length.
Nature has, in general, endowed these regions of the Antilles with great beauty, but man, in their past history, has made them the scene of the utmost cruelty, first by the Spaniards, in the ill-treatment and extermination of the gentle and harmless natives, and second, in the slave trade.
Cuba stretches its long, thin bulk from the Yucatan Strait, off the Mexican coast, and the line is continued by the Island of Hayti, containing the Republic of that name, the famous Hispaniola of the days of the Conquistadores, now a French-speaking negro State, and Santo Domingo, whose capital, the oldest settlement in the New World, founded in 1496, may be regarded as the most perfect example of a sixteenth-century Spanish town. Its cathedral contains the reputed burial place of Columbus.
No countries in the world excel these lands in the variety and richness of their tropical products, and in the beauty of their scenery. Havana, the handsome capital of Cuba, was the last stronghold of Spain in America, the Spanish flag flying there until the time of the war between Spain and the United States in 1899. The American attitude towards Cuba revealed the wisdom and generosity of the great Anglo-Saxon Republic.
Our way now lies to the north, into Mexico, that buffer-state between the Spanish American and the Anglo - American civilizations, which, upon its frontier, roll together but do not mingle.
CHAPTER IV
ANCIENT AND MODERN MEXICO
Of all the lands of the New World, none perhaps has impressed itself more on the imagination than the picturesque and enigmatical land of Mexico. It seems to stand, in our thoughts of distant countries, apart from all others, a riddle we cannot read, surrounded by a halo or mist of unreality, a region vague and shadowy as its Toltec ancestors.
Perhaps this view has in part arisen from the description of the Conquest by famous writers, which so greatly interested our forbears of the Victorian period, and by the romantic story-writers of the same era. But these matters alone would not account for the hazy atmosphere surrounding the old land of the Aztecs, which even the prosaic matters of trade and finance do not seem to lift. There are many English and American folk with commercial interests in Mexico, who draw perhaps, or in happier times there have drawn, dividends from their investment in mine, or railway, or other enterprise; but even this material standpoint fades into intangibility before the endeavour to form a true mental image of the land.
Who are the Mexicans, where does their country lie, what language do they speak, what dress do they wear? Geography and ethnology will furnish us with the most exact replies; the books of travellers will fill in abundant detail, but nevertheless, Mexico remains for us an enigma.
We shall not hope here successfully to dispel this mystery, even though we may have been there, traversed its varied surface, and lived among its people. To say that Mexico is the Egypt of the New World, whilst it is not untrue, is to deepen the atmosphere. The sandalled Indian creeps across his desert sands and irrigates them with his native torrents as he did in centuries past, lives in his wattle or adobe hut, and, if he no longer worships the sun, at least he stands before its morning rays to embrace its warmth—el capa de los pobres ("the poor man's cloak")—for poverty denies him other comfort. The rich man is clothed in fine textures of European model and may dwell in a palace, but beneath his modernized exterior are traits of the Orient, and the blood of the Moor, the Goth, the Vandal, the Roman, the Celt, the Semite, brought hither in the Spaniard, is mingled with that of the Aztec, who lived upon the great plateau and built his temples of strange and bloody worship.
No other American nation constitutes so wide a blending of original races. Spain itself was a veritable crucible of languages, peoples and creeds, whilst aboriginal Mexico contained a large number of tribes, each with their particular culture, or lack of such.[7] For Mexico, it is to be recollected, was not a land like the United States or Canada, which contained, relatively, but a few bands of Indians, without any particular form of government or developed institutions.
The grandees of Spain came out to rule this diversified land, and they did not disdain to make it their home. Spain gave it of her best often, with capable legislators, laws; the Ley de Indias, enacted for the benefit of the colonies, and erudite professors and devout—over-devout—ecclesiastics; and these often carried