Page:Mexico as it was and as it is.djvu/224

Rh The estate spreads over a tract of eleven leagues in length by three in breadth. It employs about two hundred and fifty laborers, at two and a half and three reals per day, who produce about fifty thousand loaves of sugar, of from twenty-two to twenty-four pounds, per annum. It is calculated that the molasses pays all the expenses of the establishment, which amount to near thirty thousand dollars. At the store of the hacienda, (belonging to the proprietor of the estate,) almost the whole of this sum is received back from the Indians, who, I perceived, purchased even their bread. In addition to the revenue from the sugar crop, about eight thousand head of cattle feed on the premises, half of which are the property of its owner, the other half being strays from adjoining haciendas.

We were received by Don Rafael, one of the brothers del Barrio, whom we unexpectedly met on the estate. He conducted us into a long monastic-locking hall, nearly bare of furniture, yet bearing traces of taste and refinement, in a well-selected library and valuable piano in one corner, while a hammock, suspended from the unplastered rafters, swung across the airy apartment. Here we were most hospitably entertained, and enjoyed a pleasant chat with the owner, in French, Spanish, English and German, all of which languages the worthy gentleman speaks,—having not only travelled in, but dwelt long and observingly in every country of Europe. It was strange, in these wild portions of Mexico, in the midst of Indians, to drop thus suddenly and unexpectedly by the side of a well-bred man, dressed in his simple costume of a plain country farmer, who could converse with you in most of the modern tongues, upon all subjects—from the collections of the Pitti Palace and the Vatican, to the breed and education of a game cock!

As we looked over the fields of cane, waving their long, delicate green leaves, in the mid-day sunshine to the south, he pointed out to us the site of an Indian village, at the distance of three leagues, the inhabitants which are almost in their native state. He told us, that they do not permit the visits of white people; and that, numbering more than three thousand, they come out in delegations to work at the haciendas, being governed at home by their own magistrates, administering their own laws, and employing a Catholic priest, once a year, to shrive them of their sins. The money they receive in payment of wages, at the haciendas, is taken home and buried; and as they produce the cotton and skins for their dress, and the corn and beans for their food, they purchase nothing at the stores. They form a good and harmless community of people, rarely committing a depredation upon the neighboring farmers, and only occasionally lassoing a cow or a bull, which they say they "do not steal, but take for food." If they are chased on such occasions, so great is their speed of foot, they are rarely caught even by the swiftest horses; and if their settlement is ever entered by a white, the transgressor is immediately seized, put under guard in a large hut and he and his animal are fed and carefully attended to until the