Page:Mexico, Aztec, Spanish and Republican, Vol 2.djvu/417

Rh has become a habit of the Mexican. It may, in truth, be said that the spirit of travel does not rule in Mexico, and that her people are stationary. Railways do not traverse her valleys and plains, nor do electric telegraphs convey the thoughts of her people thousands of miles in a minute. Even the mail system is expensive, incomplete and inadequate. Neither a steamboat nor a locomotive belongs to the nation.

In addition to all these habitual, accidental and geographical difficulties of travelling over and exploring this mountain country, its constant revolutionary state since the rebellion against Spain has tended to retain people as much as possible either in the neighborhood of their families or of their business and interests. Nor has scientific education been extended sufficiently to form a large or enthusiastic class of engineers who would have traversed the land and combined the results of their observations. A few scattered students have, indeed, published detached essays upon portions of the Republic, and the Comision de Estadistica Militar is now engaged in gathering statistical and geographical reports of the several States. But the elements from which these bulletins are constructed do not seem to be collected upon any uniform system of very responsible scientific inquiry. The local authorities from whom much of the numerical information is necessarily obtained, if they are connected with any of the branches of taxation, or revenue collection, are generally unreliable or corrupt, for, in consequence of the system of peculation which has been carried on during the late disorganized epoch of Mexican history, it was their interest to conceal rather than to disclose facts, especially when those facts manifested the great value or production of the region over which they presided.

Nevertheless, amid all these sad excuses for insufficiency or inaccuracy, we may congratulate Mexico upon the effort which she is now making to redeem herself from the past opprobrium. The war with the United States has taught her many things, social as well as political. Education is beginning to be more valued and expended. Periodicals and newspapers are more freely published and diffused. Their leading articles and scientific communications show that new classes of writers as well as politicians are coming readily into the field in a period of assured peace and order. These two elements of national progress will enable Mexico to become acquainted with herself, and when her students disclose the result of their discoveries, we shall be glad to see our imperfect but honest efforts superseded by a work that will confer honor upon Spanish science and literature.