Page:The Rambler in Mexico.djvu/30

24 Indian raises his bamboo cage, plastered with mud, and thatched with palm leaves, according to the custom of his forefathers.

The population is of course the most mongrel that can be conceived. The commerce of the port is principally in the hands of foreigners; the imports consisting of every imaginable fabric, whether their introduction is consistent with the existing laws of the republic or not. Smuggling is reduced to a system. The exports are confined to specie and fustic alone. Of the former, seven millions of dollars from the upper provinces were shipped at this port alone, during the year 1833.

The sum of the population the preceding year, before the cholera broke out, had been estimated at five thousand. Of these, three thousand are said to have been swept away: and though the town was rapidly recruiting its numbers at the time of our visit, the enormous price paid for every article, whether of foreign or domestic production, as well as for labour, is hardly to be credited. Wages for the poorest mason or carpenter, generally English or German, amounted to three or four dollars a day: indeed I knew one instance of a " turn out" of the workmen employed upon the house of one of the principal merchants, who were not content with four dollars, but laid a claim to six! The most ragged urchin lying all day under the shade in the street, if asked to lend a hand to aid the operations of the merchant for a few hours, will not stir till he has made his bargain for a couple of dollars payment. You cannot cross the river, a row of five minutes, for less. To come up from the bar, a distance of six miles, though you be ten in company—ten dollars per head is the sum demanded. Good law, and good physicking—and one might add, good advice, that cheapest of all articles in an ordinary state of society—cannot be had for love or money. This, among a beggarly, half-naked population, (I cry your pardon for speaking so of a sovereign people,) would be perfectly laughable, if it were not felt to be a serious matter. You may remark that both classes,