lode" here yielded up enormous wealth. The pleasing city of Zacatecas to-day grew from another discovery of silver ores, which produced a value, up to the middle of last century, of nearly eight hundred million dollars. The curious archives of these mines, which still exist, show how carefully the Spaniards worked them. The Pachuca mines, which to-day are still worked, yielded similar wealth, and it was here that the well-known patio or amalgamation process was discovered, with quicksilver from Peru.
There are other centres, scarcely less important, well known to the mineralogist. The mineral-bearing zone of Mexico is sixteen hundred miles long, and yields nearly all the metals known to commerce. Coal, however, is not a frequent product. The country has been described as a paradise for the prospector. The mines are innumerable: almost every hill is pierced or perforated by shafts and galleries, ancient or modern; some are enormous tunnels, or socavones.
CORDOVA AND THE PEAK OF ORIZABA. STATE OF VERA CRUZ.
Vol. I. To face p. 132.
The Mexican native miner is, in his way, expert and active, and with rude appliances performs marvels in the work of ore extraction. Halt a moment by yonder pit in the rocky slope. Look down: a notched pole descends, upon which you would hesitate to venture, giving access to the workings beneath. Yet, in a moment, perhaps, a peon, bearing on his back an enormous load of rock in a hide or sack, will ascend from the bowels of the earth, panting and groaning—we shall hear the noise of his breathing before we see him. He will cast his load at our feet, and from it will roll the gleaming quartz and pyrites, with perhaps the red of the rosicler, or rich oxide ore of silver, or the yellow ochres of the decomposed gold-bearing sulphides, more readily prepared by Nature for treatment and winning of the yellow metal. Or he may bear it to the stream-bed, there to treat it in some primitive stone mill.
Otherwise we may visit huge modern mills where hundreds of stamps are clanging and engines are winding and furnaces are burning, for a host of these exist throughout the land, though disorder and revolution may have suspended their operations.
Many curious products of the vegetable world attract our eyes. Behold yonder stupendous cactus-trees—the organo cactus, whose symmetrical spiny branches like a giant candelabrum, weighing perhaps tons, with their mass of sappy foliage, arise from a single stem, which could be brought down by a stroke of a machete, or wood-knife—that formidable implement or weapon (made perhaps in Birmingham) which the Mexican peon loves to wield or use. Look at the marvellous giant leaves of the juicy maguey, or agave, as long as a man, and see the peon insert his siphon to the heart of the plant to draw forth its sap, which he blows into the goatskin on his back, and from which he will presently make his pulque. This plant, the great American aloe, comes into flower and dies in a few years. It exhausts itself in flowering. In England we call it the century plant, for the exotic lingers long in the unfavourable climate, and with difficulty puts forth its blossoms at all. There, too, are hedges and circas of prickly-pear, or nopal, which yield the delicious wild fig—the cactus familiar to the traveller in the Holy Land and Syria, whence it was taken from Mexico.
In the coastal lands, as before remarked, the feathery coconut-palm waves over the villages, and the elegant leaves of the banana form refreshing groves, and the cacao yields its stores of chocolate. Lovers of this sweetmeat might hear the name of Mexico in gratitude indeed, for is not the very name and product of Aztec origin—the chocolatl of the early folk here? In the tropic forests and plantations the beautiful rubber, the Castilloa elastica-tree, rears its stately foliage, and here, again, are we not indebted to Mexico? Remember it, ye lovers of lawn tennis. For when the early Spaniards arrived they found the Mexicans playing tennis, with balls of rubber, in those curious courts whose ruins still remain in the jungles of Yucatan.
Again, yonder flies the wild turkey. Was he not the progenitor of that noble bird which comes upon our Christmas tables? Here, too, is the zenzontl; or mocking-bird, and a host of gorgeous winged creatures besides.
Through many a desert range and over many a chain of hills, violet in the distance, alluring and remote; past many a sacred well or hill marked by a cross, hard by the paths worn by the generations of bare or sandalled feet we may pass; and here, perchance, by some spring stands a startled native maid, her olla, or great water-pitcher, on her shoulder—stands in classic but unwitting pose. Or through the heat a mounted vaquero rides upon his attenuated mule or horse—for the equine race works hard and eats little here, but bit, spur and the bridle are his till the day he leaves his bones upon the trail—and, "Buenos dias, señor," with doffed hat the horseman gives us as he passes, with ever-ready Mexican courtesy to the foreigner; or he did so until of recent times, when, for reasons we need not here dilate upon, the foreigner has come to be regarded with anything but friendship.
There was always a charm about this old land of Mexico; there still is, despite its recent turbulent history. Small wonder that foreigners in increasing numbers loved to make their life in its quaint towns, to take up land and industry within it.
Of these towns we cannot speak here; Guadalajara, Puebla, Oaxaca and many another invite us to their pleasing streets and ancient buildings. From the Atlantic to the Pacific, from north to south, they are dispersed over the wide area of the Republic.
The southern, or rather easternmost States of Mexico are, as regards their landscape and life, often of peculiar interest, mainly by reason of the more tropical surroundings and the large rivers, such as those that flow into the Gulf of Campeche, in Vera Cruz and Tabasco.
Typical of these rivers are the Grijalva and the Usumacinta. In places lined by dark forests, the banks elsewhere open out to permit of plantations of bananas, tobacco, maize, pineapples, rubber and so forth, and an occasional village, its white walls gleaming among the foliage, the roofs thatched with palm, gives the human touch thereto.
Ascending the river in a slow stern-wheel steamer, we remark an occasional canoe, laden with skins and other produce, or moored inshore whilst its occupants are fishing in the plentifully stocked waters. There are great trees festooned with masses of moss and with trailing lianas, where monkeys play by day and from whence at night their howling falls on the ear. The white heron and aigret, whose snowy plumage is so valuable an article of commerce, startled by the passage of the boat, sail gracefully away to the bends of the river, and flocks of parrots, similarly disturbed, scream their defiance, whilst wild ducks and cranes and birds of the brightest plumage are in sight at every moment. The alligators, large and small, that throng the shoals project their grotesque forms into the water, offering a mark to the gun of the idle huntsman.
In the flower world Nature is often gorgeously arrayed here. Pure white lilies lie at the base of flowering trees that rise in a mass of bloom for forty feet or more, of a profusion and beauty almost inconceivable. The queen of the banks, the stately coco-palm, carries its load of nuts, waiting for nothing but the gatherer of a harvest provided by Nature. Here, too, is the cinchona-tree, with its bright, smooth red trunk and branches and rich green leaves, offering its virtues of quinine bark. The arnica plant, with its daisy-like yellow flowers, and the morning glory of rich and brilliant hue abound, and the orchids—"not the dwarfed product of a northern hothouse, but huge, entrancing, of the richest browns, the tenderest greens, the most vivid reds and the softest yellow, sometimes as many as half a dozen upon one tree"—decorate the decayed trunks of the trees. There are, too, natural plantations of wild pineapples, and many fruits besides.
A good deal of land in these regions is capable of cultivation, and, extremely fertile, yields profitable returns. But means of transport are, of course, defective, although the rivers offer long lines of communication. The Indians do not love work, except inasmuch as such may fill their own small requirements, for in so bountiful a region Nature supplies them with many things necessary for life, which a very few hours' labour will supplement for a whole year. There is rivalry between the established planters for the available labour, and peonage is largely carried out.
In Yucatan, the labour system upon the plantations of the Mexican millionaire hemp-growers of the peninsula has been described as little more than slavery by some writers. But great wealth and some measure of progress have resulted from