Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 29.djvu/316

302 the evil has long been recognized, and at present especially interests the Government. But the difficulties in the way of applying an efficacious remedy are very great, and engineers are not fully agreed as to the best method for attaining the desired result. "For such is the nature of the plain upon which Mexico is built, such the conformation of the land and the contour of the mountains about it, that a vast system of tunneling and canalization would be necessary to create a fall sufficient to drain the valley; and, before the city can be drained, the valley must be." It is said that one celebrated American engineer, whose advice was recently asked by the Government, reported that, if a thorough drainage could be effected, the city, through a consequent shrinkage of soil, would probably tumble down. And, finally, the existing condition of the national and municipal finances is such, that it is not easy for the authorities to determine how the money necessary to meet the contingent great expenditures—estimated at about $9,000,000, or a sum equivalent to more than one third of the entire annual revenue of the General Government—is to be provided.

It ought not to be inferred that there is special danger to travelers, or tourists, visiting the Mexican capital, and residing there during the winter months or early spring; for experience shows that, with ordinary precautions in respect to location, diet, exercise, and exposure, health can be maintained there as easily as in most of the cities of Italy at the same seasons.

At Vera Cruz, the local name of which is "El Vomito" (a term doubtless originating from the continued prevalence in the town of yellow fever), the sanitary conditions are much worse than in the city of Mexico; and the causes of the evil, being mainly climatic, are probably not removable. The statistics of mortality at this place, gathered and published by the United States Department of State, are simply appalling. Thus, the population of Vera Cruz in 1869 was returned at 13,492. The number of deaths occurring during the ten years ending September, 1880, was 12,219. The average duration of life in Vera Cruz for this period was, therefore, about eleven years! Other calculations indicate the average annual death-rate of this place to be about ninety per thousand, as compared with the annual average for all the leading cities of the United States for the year 1880, of 22·28 per thousand.

The writer feels that he would be guilty of a grave omission, in this connection, if he failed to quote and also to indorse the words with which the United States consul, who gathered and communicated these facts, thus concludes his official report, October, 1880: "With these awful facts before me, I leave it to the common judgment and high ideas that our law-makers have of justice to say whether or not the salary of the consul who, for eleven years, has lived in such an atmosphere, ought or ought not to be placed at least back to where it was when he was sent here."