ornament of the sky--the Southern
Cross, I felt that I had left the tropics, and that all my efforts to
realize the life of the last half-year would produce but a vague and
shadowy picture.

Since we left Mexico, I have not cared to follow very accurately even
the newspaper intelligence of what has been and still is going on
there. It is a pitiable history. Continual wars and revolutions, utter
insecurity of life and property, the Indians burning down the haciendas
in the South and turning out the white people, the roads on the plains
impassable on account of deserters and robbers; sometimes no practical
government at all, then two or three at once, who raise armies and
fight a little sometimes, but generally confine themselves to
plundering the peaceable inhabitants. An army besieges the capital for
months, but appears to do nothing but cut the water off from the
aqueducts, shoot stragglers, and levy contributions. One leader raises
a forced loan among the foreign residents, and imprisons or expels
those who do not submit. The leader on the other side does the same in
his part of the country, putting the British merchant in prisons where
a fortnight would be a fair average life for an European, and
threatening him with summary courtmartial and execution if he does not
pay.

London newspapers dwell on these details, and tell us that we may learn
from the condition of this unfortunate country how useless are
democratic forms among a people incapable of liberty, and that very
weak governments can commit all sorts of crimes with impunity, from the
fact that they have no official existence which foreign powers can
recognize; and various other weighty moral lessons, which must be
highly edifying to our countrymen in the Republic, who are meanwhile
left pretty much to shift for themselves.

All this time the United States are steadily advancing; and the destiny
of the country is gradually accomplishing itself. That its total
absorption must come, sooner or later, we can hardly doubt. The chief
difficulty seems to be that the American constitution will not exactly
suit the case. The Republic laid down the right of each citizen to his
share in the government of the country as a universal law, founded on
indefeasible lights of humanity, fundamental laws of nature, and what
not, making, it is true, some slight exceptions with regard to red and
black men. The Mexicans, or at least the white and half-caste Mexicans,
will be a