Page:Mexico (1829) Volumes 1 and 2.djvu/513

 MEXICO. tax,) and the families of some of the Spanish merchants established at Jalapa and Veracruz, it will be found that almost the whole landed property of the country is in the hands of Mining families, and has, in a great measure, been brought into cultivation by the mines. They furnished the means of building the vast Presas de Agua, or reservoirs, without which agriculture can so seldom be carried on suc- cessfully upon the Table-land ; and thus rendered productive districts, the fertility of which, had nature not been assisted by art, would never have been developed ; while the constant demand, in the Mining towns, for every article of agricul- tural produce, rendered this mode of investing capital pre- ferable to any other then open to a Native. The Civil War has, indeed, reduced almost to nothing the value of these possessions, and there is little, at present, to demonstrate the wealth, to which, under more favourable circumstances, the principal famihes of the Republic will find themselves re- stored : but time alone is wanting in order to bring things round their natural level ; the seeds of opulence are there, and, in proportion as the country advances towards a more settled order of things, the period approaches, at which they may be again expected to produce their former fruits. Melancholy, indeed, would be the fate of Mexico, if the source from which all her riches have hitherto been derived, were, as some suppose, exhausted and dried up ! She could not only find no substitute for her mines in her foreign trade, of which they furnish the great staple. Silver, but her resources at home would decrease, in exactly the same pro- portion as her means of supplying her wants from abroad. Her Agriculture would be confined to such a supply of the necessaries of life, as each individual would have it in his power to raise ; — districts, formerly amongst the richest in the known world, would be thrown for ever out of culti- vation ; — the great Mining towns would become, what they were during the worst years of the Revolution, the picture