Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 29.djvu/314

300 for first-class modern merchant-vessels—those of Anton Lizado on the Gulf, and Acapulco on the Pacific. All the other so-called seaports now used by commerce are open roadsteads, dangerous in rough weather, and only approachable in lighters, or are located on rivers, the entrances to which are closed to ocean traders by shallows or sand-bars. The natural obstructions and difficulties in the way of inland traffic are scarcely less observable. Mexico is entirely wanting in navigable rivers and lakes. Her fertile districts, capital cities, and centers of population are separated from each other by long distances, arid districts, immense chains of mountains, and vast barrancas washed out by her rapidly descending water-courses. These difficulties were partially overcome by the Spaniards, who constructed a noble system of highways and bridges extending between the principal cities of the viceroyalty, but from the nature of the soil they were immensely expensive to construct and difficult to maintain. During the long and ruinous wars for independence, and the civil wars which followed, these highways went rapidly to destruction; and, notwithstanding recent repairs and reconstructions, the general condition of Mexican highways is not encouraging to either commerce or travel. But all these natural and accidental disadvantages combined may be regarded as nothing in comparison with the crushing and suffocating influences brought to bear on Mexican commerce, foreign and domestic, by the exclusive policy imposed by the mother-country during the three centuries of Mexico's colonial vassalage; and, secondly, by the system of internal and interstate duties and custom-houses, inherited from Old Spain, which still practically vexes the internal commerce of the republic."

—The sanitary condition of every country constitutes an important element in determining its commercial development, and Mexico especially illustrates the truth of this proposition. The coast-lands of the republic are hot and unhealthy. The more elevated portions, where nine tenths of the people live, are claimed to be unsurpassed in salubrity. Strangers from northern latitudes, and accustomed to the ordinary levels of human residence, are liable, on coming to the Mexican plateau, to a process of acclimation, which, although often very trying, is rarely attended with any very serious consequences. Horse-dealers from Texas state that they lose from twelve to twenty per cent of the horses brought to the city of Mexico for sale, solely from the climatic influences contingent on its great altitude; and the common house-cat, it is said, does not thrive, and is scarce on the highlands of Mexico for like reasons. The sanitary conditions of the two chief commercial centers of the republic, namely, the city of Mexico and of Vera Cruz, are, however, so extraordinary and so obstructive to national progress that any review of the country would be imperfect that neglected to notice them. The evil in the