Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 70.djvu/216

212 In the Apam district, the plantations are chiefly found on the large haciendas or estates. The first impression of a traveler who passes from Vera Cruz to the capital is likely to be wrong if, as is usually the case, he regard the table-land—so barren after the tropical vegetation in and below the coffee country—as a desert with this strange industry as its one resource. The observant person, however, sees, usually with surprise, enormous stacks of straw here and there in the maguey fields, each commonly marked with a great carved cross or other symbol, and all carefully trimmed into house form; and a shrewd inference

that where there is a good deal of straw there must be some grain is justified on a closer acquaintance with the country.

A first visit to a Mexican hacienda is an interesting episode in one's traveling experiences. Comfort, as we understand it, is scarcely to be had in the dustier regions during the dry season; and as one looks over the barren country it is hard to see where food is obtained for the swarm of peon retainers for whom even a church is not lacking in the walled village which their dwellings constitute. The wealth of such an estate is found in its extent. I recall the surprise with which,