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486 the above figures. Among the merchants there is discouragement and gloom, and among the people at large, more of uncertainty as to the future, apathy, or actual discontent, than I saw anywhere else in the Republic.

I went down with the crowd one day, to see the arrival of a coasting steamer—everybody in Vera Cruz goes down to the mole to see a steamer, big or little, come in. The arrival was the little square-toed side-wheeler, Ejujenia, from Tlacotalplam—and steamer and cargo reminded me, forcibly, of the description of the Yankee trading craft which Marryatt in one of his novels, describes so vividly. I mean the craft he met coming out of the West Indies, whose captain sold his spars to a French privateer, and then sent the English privateer into a trap, by telling him that there was but one French vessel instead of two, and the force so small and unprepared as to make it perfectly safe to attack them when they were lying at anchor repairing. The steamer might possibly be one hundred feet long and about half as broad, with a bow so like an old fashioned man-of-war's stern, as to make it a matter of doubt whether she would travel best "end foremost" or "broadside on."

A motley list of passengers and a mixed cargo had been picked up along the coast. The passengers were of all colors and nationalities, and from seventy-five to one hundred in number. About half, appeared to have complexions disastrously affected by coast-fevers and malarious diseases. As for the cargo, it comprised a little of everything. Crates of live chickens, great earthenware jars for holding drinking water, bunches of plantains and bananas, rolls of tiger skins, bales on