Page:Pictures of life in Mexico Vol 2.djvu/241

Rh labour cannot be given than the fact that though short staple cotton sells at from forty to fortyfive cents (about 1s. 8d. to 1s. 10d. English) per pound, while they have lands and climate well adapted to its culture yet they never make enough for their own small consumption. Although the whole road from the city of Vera Cruz to the city of Mexico passes through a country inexpressibly picturesque and beautiful, yet the ignorant idle and degraded population and the general absence of cultivation and improvement produce in the mind of a spectator feeling's of unmitigated gloom and melancholy: the great mass of the population dozing out their lives with no higher thoughts or purposes than the beasts which perish around them.

It must be remarked that the estimates forming the bulk of this chapter, compiled as they necessarily are from Mexican statements, appear very favourable; and exhibit the commerce of the republic in this commodity in its most prosperous light.

As several Mexican modes of measurement have been referred to in these pages, it may be well to give a complete copy of the weights and measures now in use in the republic.