Page:Mexico (1829) Volumes 1 and 2.djvu/99

 MEXICO. 67 to improve, and the price rises from ten, or fourteen reals, to twenty-four, and twenty-eight reals, per Arroba. This is the case at Queretaro, with what is termed the Lana de chin- chorro^ of which I shall have occasion to speak in he account of my journey into the Interior. The total agricultural produce of Mexico, calculated by Humboldt upon the Tithes, (on a term of ten years,) with an allowance of three millions of dollars for the Cochineal, the Vanilla, Jalap, Sarsaparilla, and Tabascan pepper, which paid no tithes, and two millions more for the Sugar and In- digo, upon which the clergy only received a duty of four per cent., was found to amount to twenty-nine millions of dollars, and thus to exceed, by four millions, the annual average produce of the mines, from which the wealth of the country was supposed to be principally derived. Of the present amount it is impossible to form any correct estimate, from the state of disorganization into which both church, and state, have been thrown by the civil war. But the produce, under less favourable circumstances, cannot be objected to as a criterion of what may again be ; and, should the country continue in a state of tranquillity, I am inclined to think, that before the year 1835, the agri- cultural wealth of New Spain will be fully equal to that of 1803. Without wishing to found any unreasonable hypothesis upon the contents of the preceding pages, it appears to me that they warrant the following conclusions. That Mexico possesses the means of maintaining, in abun- dance, a population infinitely superior to the present number of its inhabitants. That although, from the peculiar structure of the coun- try, the agricultural wealth of the Table-land is not likely to be brought into the European market, it ensures the general prosperity of the Interior ; while the cotton, coffee, sugar, F 2