Page:Six Months In Mexico.pdf/75

Rh in the world where one could get so much out of a piece of property. One end of a field can be tilled while the other is being harvested, and one can have as many crops a year as he has energy and time to plant. There is no doubt that anything can be cultivated here. Of course, peaches and apples are not plenty, because they only grow wild. Why, even a nurseryman would fail to recognize them in the small, scraggy, untrimmed bushes. The native fruits are fine, from the reason that they need no cultivating or trimming. If they did, Mexico would have a famine in the fruit line.

Land in Mexico is very cheap, and the Government collects a tax only on what is cultivated. One sensible man, by the name of Hale, came here from San Francisco a few weeks ago to buy property. A minister of the Gospel, a particular friend of Hale's, is authority for it that Senor Hale bought from the Government sixty-five thousand square miles—larger than the whole of England, I believe—for $1,000,000.

I don't think one would ever tire of the gayly-colored pictures Mexico is ever presenting. Though in Mexico two months, I can find something new every time I glance at the queer people. This little basket vender is but one of thousands, but we find he is the first one to wear his white shirt without tying the two sides together in a knot in front. He must surely have forgotten that part of his toilet, as it is the universal style and custom among them all. Very