Page:Face to Face With the Mexicans.djvu/410

404 One fact worthy of being chronicled is, that the common people are making a considerable effort toward advancement in learning to read and write, even while employed as servants in families. I saw several at the capital who, unaided, were studying Spanish one day and English the next.

Mexico has a population of about 10,000,000, of which one and a half are pure white—Americans, Germans, French, English and Spaniards—and two and a half mestizos—leaving about 6,000,000 of Indians.

It has been estimated that there are five hundred different dialects in the country. The Indians have, in the main, retained their own race and tribal characteristics. Spanish is the language of many of them, but numerous tribes are to be found who speak purely in their own tongue, and cling to their own traditions, dress, and to some extent, their own peculiar forms of religious worship, seldom intermarrying with others.

In the sixteenth century, according to Mexico á travers de los Siglos the types were classified as follows, and, barring the natural increase of population, they remain about the same to-day:

Occasionally race characteristics, after lying dormant for perhaps generations, crop out unexpectedly in families, causing quite a shock when they appear. A dark, or as is sometimes the case, black child makes its appearance, and this is called Salta atrás (a leap over several generations).

The mestizos are the handsomest, and the zambos must rest