Page:Life in Mexico vol 1.djvu/279

Rh used as a plaza de toros. The rooms are well fitted up, and the bedroom walls are covered with a pretty French paper, representing scenes of Swiss rural life. There are great outhouses, stables for the mules and horses, and stone barns for the wheat and barley, which, together with pulque, form the produce of this hacienda.

We took a long ride this morning to visit a fine lake, where there are plenty of wild duck and turtle. The gentlemen took their guns, and had tolerable sport. The lake is very deep, so that boats have sailed on it, and several miles in circumference, with a rivulet flowing from it. Yet with all this water, the surrounding land, not more than twenty feet higher, is dry and sterile, and the lake is turned to no account; either from want of means or of hydraulic knowledge. However, Cn having made some observation on this subject, the proprietor of the lake and of a ruined house standing near, which is the very picture of loneliness and desolation, remarked in reply; that from this estate to Mexico, the distance is thirty-six leagues; that a load of wheat costs one real a league, and moreover the alcaba, the duty which has to be paid at the gates of Mexico, so that it would bring no profit if sent there; while in the surrounding district there is not sufficient population to consume the produce; so that these unnecessary and burthensome taxes, the thinness of the population and the want of proper means of transport, impede the prosperity of the people, and check the progress of agriculture. . ..

I had a beautiful horse, but half broke, and which