Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 28.djvu/748

728 in the city of Mexico or in Europe, and intrust the management of their property to a superintendent, who, like the owner, considers himself a gentleman, and whose chief business is to keep the peons in debt, or, what is substantially the same thing, in slavery. Whatever work is done is performed by the peons—in whose veins Indian blood predominates—in their own way and in their own time. They have but few tools, and, except possibly some contrivances for raising water, nothing worthy the name of machinery. Without being bred to any mechanical profession, the peons make and repair nearly every implement or tool that is used upon the estate, and this too without the use of a forge or of iron, not even of bolts and nails. The explanation of such an apparently marvelous result is to be found in a single word, or rather material, raw-hide, with which the peon feels himself qualified to meet almost any constructive emergency, from the framing of a house to the making of a loom, the mending of a gun, or the repair of a broken leg; and yet even under these circumstances the great Mexican estates, owing to their exemption from taxation, and the cheapness of labor, are said to be profitable, and, in cases where a fair supply of water is obtainable, to even return large incomes to their absentee owners.

In no truly Mexican house of high or low degree, from the adobe hut of the peasant to the stone palace erected by the Emperor Iturbide, are there any arrangements for warming or, in the American sense, for cooking; and in the entire city of Mexico, with an estimated population of from 225,000 to 500,000, chimneys, fireplaces, and stoves are so rare that it is commonly said that there are none. This latter statement is, however, not strictly correct; yet it approximates so closely to the truth that, but for provision for warm baths, there is probably no exception to it in any of the larger hotels of the city where foreigners most do congregate. Apart from the capital and some of the larger cities, Mexico is noticeably deficient in hotels or inns for the accommodation of travelers, and in a majority of the smaller towns there are no such places. And why should there be? The natives rarely go anywhere, and consequently do not expect anybody to come to them.

Large, costly, and often elegant stone edifices—public and private—are not wanting in the principal towns and cities of Mexico; but all, save those of very recent construction, have the characteristic Saracenic or Moorish architecture of Southern Spain—namely, a rectangular structure with rooms opening on to interior piazzas, and a more or less spacious court-yard, which is often fancifully paved and ornamented with fountains and shrubbery; while the exterior, with its gate-furnished archways and narrow and iron-grated windows, suggests the idea of a desire for jealous seclusion on the part of the inmates, or fear of possible outside attack and disturbance. Wooden buildings are almost unknown in Mexico, and in all interiors wood is