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208 and with increased facilities for travel, the number of people—restless, adventurous, speculative, or otherwise minded—who are certain to cross the borders into Mexico for all purposes, good and bad, is likely to rapidly increase in the future. An extensive strip of territory within the Mexican frontier is already dominated, to a great extent, for the purposes of contraband trade, by a class of men who acknowledge no allegiance to any government, and whom the Mexican authorities tacitly admit they can not restrain, and who seem to find their greatest profit in smuggling, and their greatest enjoyment in cattle-stealing, gambling, and in fights with the Indians or among themselves. And it is undoubtedly from this rough border population, who no more represent Mexico than the cow-boys of Texas and Colorado represent the people of the United States, that much of the denunciation and complaint about Mexico, its courts and its officials, which finds its way into the columns of American newspapers, originates in the first instance.

An opinion also prevails to a considerable extent, that there is a deliberate scheme—in the nature of a gigantic land-speculation—on the part of a not inconsiderable number of not unimportant people, both Americans and Mexicans, and on both sides of the border, to do all in their