Page:Pictures of life in Mexico Vol 2.djvu/112

88 sometimes to be observed in place of other divisions on the fields; more commonly, however, there are no enclosures at all; consequently, the owners of cattle and horses are compelled to employ herdsmen, to prevent them from encroaching on the crops and lands of their neighbours.

Agricultural implements are miserably rude and inefficient. Their wooden ploughs are usually shaped out of the trunk of a tree, cut into handles; the ploughshare being merely a wooden projection sloping downwards; while the yoke consists of a flat beam, to which the oxen are secured. The hoe, of uncouth manufacture, and frequently containing little or no iron, is the article most in use upon the lands. Thus are the people condemned, by their indolent spirit, to throw up the soil from the first in a slow and unsatisfactory manner, on account of the unserviceable nature of their most indispensable instruments of cultivation.

Pure vegetable and farinaceous productions are neither very various nor extensive in this country. Indian corn and wheat are the recognised staple articles of the latter class; and in some soils two or three crops are realized in one year. Frijoles, or small beans,