Page:Face to Face With the Mexicans.djvu/569

Rh More paper factories are needed, and no country offers greater inducements, as the maguey is ever at hand to furnish pulp for the enterprise. France and Belgium have heretofore supplied the market, with a moderate amount from Germany and England. If Americans do not go there to manufacture paper, they should certainly be able to compete with all others in supplying the market with a superior article.

Considerable attention is now paid to the importation and breeding of fine stock of all kinds, and Mexico offers unsurpassed facilities for this purpose, by reason of the equable climate and extensive pasturage. For, while cattle men annually lose thousands in their chosen sites in the United States, in Mexico it is perennial springtime for man and beast.

The meats are excellent in flavor and quality, the mutton being especially delicious. But a difficulty lies, generally, in the butchers, who cut and slash it in so many directions that it is difficult to tell what part of the animal you are eating.



Butter everywhere is a very scarce and inferior commodity. Housewives know nothing of making and caring for this article, which to Americans is a prime necessity. The most primitive means are employed in its manufacture. In some places the milk is put into a sheep or goat skin, then fastened on a mule or burro, usually the latter, and trotted at a rapid rate. Inferior in quality as it is, I have never seen a pound sell for less than from four to six reals. The natives make a cheese from goat's milk that is quite good when one becomes accustomed to it; but no attention is given to cheese-