ded
majority of the population. The number of pure whites in the country is
estimated at about three and a half millions, out of a probable
nineteen millions of total inhabitants, eight millions being pure
Indians and about seven and a half millions of mixed castes, most of
whom are more brown than white.

The future of the Republic, therefore, in an ethnological sense, is one
of the most interesting problems of the American Continent. The old
Spanish aristocratic aloofness traditional on the part of the pure
whites will take many generations entirely to break down, and the
increased communication between the Republic and the citizens of the
United States will probably reinforce the white races with a new
element of resistance to fusion; but in the end a homogeneous brown
race will probably people the whole of Mexico--a race, to judge from
the specimens of the admixture now in existence, capable of the highest
duties of civilisation, robust in body, patriotic in character,
progressive and law-abiding to a greater extent, perhaps, than are
purely Latin peoples.

The present book relates in vivid and graphic words the history of
Mexico during the time that it served as a milch cow to the insatiable
Spanish kings and their satellites. But for the gold and silver that
came in the fleet from New Spain, when, indeed, it was not captured by
English or Dutch rovers, the gigantic imposition of Spanish power in
Europe could not have been maintained even as a pretence throughout the
greater part of the seventeenth century as it was. For nearly three
centuries one set of greedy Viceroys and high officials after another
settled from the mother country upon unresisting Mexico and sucked its
blood like vampires. Some of them, it is true, made attempts to
palliate their rapacity by the introduction of improved methods of
agriculture, mining, and the civilised arts, and Mexico, in close touch
with Spain, was not allowed, as the neighbouring Spanish territory of
the isthmus was, to sink into utter stagnation. The efforts of the
Count of Tendilla to keep his Viceroyalty abreast of his times in the
mid sixteenth century are still gratefully remembered, as is the name
of his successor Velasco, who struck a stout blow for the freedom of
the native Indians enslaved in the mines, and emancipated 150,000 of
them. But on the whole, especially after the establishment of the
Inquisition in Mexico, the story of the Spanish domination is generally