Page:Pictures of life in Mexico Vol 2.djvu/114

90 perhaps is the banana tree; its fruit is so abundant and massive that a field only capable of producing thirty pounds of wheat, would yield three or four thousand pounds weight of food, if planted with the banana or plantain.

Numerous haciendas throughout the republic, which were at first only single farm-houses, have become miniature villages and hamlets, composed of a number of habitations of different grades. This is one effect of the unsafe and uncertain state of society in the country.

The traveller may occasionally observe a favourable specimen of one of these haciendas before him, as he descends the rugged mountain paths so frequently to be encountered on his way. Perhaps it may be in the bosom of a verdant hollow, enclosed on all sides by hills. The walls of the principal buildings will most likely be of a particoloured admixture—here a dash of red, and there a wall of white. Small huts will probably surround the larger erections, where the Indian labourers on the estate reside. Sugar plantations may be seen in the background, of a productive quality, and kept in better order than ordinary. The landscape