Page:Mexico (1829) Volumes 1 and 2.djvu/92

 60 MEXICO. of rivers, or in districts liable to be annually overflowed, (tierras anegadizas,) in which the cacao tree thrives best. The number of trees now under cultivation is not known, but the average annual produce is stated not to be less than 15,000 cargas, of 601bs. each. COTTON. Cotton was found amongst the indigenous productions of Mexico, at the time of the conquest, and furnished almost the only clothing used by the natives. The cultivation has been since much neglected, and the art of imparting to it the brilliant colours so common amongst the Aztecs, entirely lost. Up to the close of the last century, however, the annual value of the cotton manufactures of the country was esti- mated at five millions of dollars. They are now gradually disappearing, as the supply of European manufactures be- comes more abundant, and will probably cease to exist in the course of a few years ; but the raw material, by which they were supplied, may become of the greatest importance, if the cotton plantations be kept up, as an article, not of home consumption, but of exportation for the foreign market. The Mexicans are not yet aware of the advantages which they might derive from this change, or of the facility with which it might be effected. Throughout the United States, cotton is a plant of annual growth ; the frost destroys it, and every year the labour of clearing the ground, and forming a fresh plantation, must be undertaken anew. In the Tierra caliente of Mexico, nothing of the kind is required; the tree propagates itself, and the only attention requisite, on the part of the proprietor, is to prevent the ground from being overrun by the multiplicity of other plants, which the profuse vegetation of the Tropics is con- tinually calling into existence. There are still considerable cotton plantations upon the W ««tr.»-n coast, and in the vicinity of the River Nazas, in