Page:Travels in Mexico and life among the Mexicans.djvu/514

506 "A few men have got all the land, and they keep it. The working people are only slaves, the best of them get only a quarter a day, and find themselves. It's no wonder that everybody's a thief. Why, these beggars are so poor that they never have twenty cents with 'em over night. Not a thing is wasted, the last bone and scrap of meat, and bit of old rag, is carefully saved; why, they've even driven the buzzards out of the country! A vulture would be ashamed of himself everlastingly if he ate and lived among the filth these Mexicans do."

It happened that we saw some vultures sitting on the trees of the Paseo the same afternoon my Chicago friend conveyed this information to me; but he insisted that they were imitations,—that a live one could not exist there.

"This government," continued he, "does everything to encourage the hacendado, or proprietor of large estates, to hold

on to his large tracts of land, and to discourage every attempt of a stranger to locate here. There was a Frenchman, who put up a flouring-mill and commenced to do a big business. The millers here became jealous, and the next thing that Frenchman knew, the government clapped a tax of $200 on each set of buhrs; and now that man 's just settin' in his ruins, looking wise. And steal! what you see lying about here that these people have n't gathered in, you may set down as not worth stealing. They're on the lookout for something all the time,—and they generally find it, too.

"Look at the haciendas all over the country; they are like forts, not built for protection from Indians, but from their own