Page:Mexico, Aztec, Spanish and Republican, Vol 2.djvu/92

66 plant is estimated at about two and a half pounds throughout all parts of the republic where the berry is cultivated; though there are districts of Mexico in which it is said that three or four pounds are yielded. This probably depends very much on the size, age, or quality of the tree. Mr. Ward states that he knew of a single tree, in the garden of Don Pablo de la Llave, at Cordova, which produced ''twenty-eight pounds! '' The slope of the eastern Cordillera is supposed to be best calculated for coffee estates, and it is believed that Yucatan and Tabasco will ultimately, under favorable circumstances, become the centres of a lucrative trade in this article, if the Indian population can ever be trained to agricultural labors, or made productively industrious in a land where the wants of nature are so few and so easily supplied. The plantations in the interior must long be excluded from foreign markets for the same reason that we have assigned in regard to sugar. Roads and improved transportation are the fundamental and primary elements of commercial civilization, and until these are obtained permanently, Mexico must look chiefly to her domestic market for agricultural recompense.

In a country in which all the men, and nearly all the women are habitual and even constant smokers, tobacco, must necessarily be an article of national importance. So valuable is its production that the government has continued to maintain the monopoly of its sale, and, previous to the revolution, managed to obtain an annual clear revenue of from one to two millions and a half of dollars, with a gross income, occasionally, of over seven millions and a half. In the cigar factories of Oajaca five millions of packets of paper cigarritos of thirty in each were prepared, besides sixty thousand packets each containing seven puros or ordinary cigars.

Tobacco grows well in a small district near Orizaba and Cordova, but the best article produced in the republic, comes from Simojovel in the state of Chiapas and from some districts of Oajaca. In Yucatan and Tabasco, the plant is also cultivated successfully, and produces a mild and fragrant leaf which is not included in the national monopoly. A large portion of the tobacco sold in the republic is contraband; for the ridiculous and greedy restrictions and exactions with which a plant of such universal consumption is surrounded, necessarily dispose the people to violate laws which they feel were only made to impair their rights of production and trade under a constitution professing to be free.