cruellest
and most treacherous race the world has ever known. Well might these
savages have been hunted to the death by the invaders of the white
race, both here and on the great American deserts north of the Rio
Grande, and well might their scalpings and torturings form the theme
for those adventurous novels which made our flesh creep as we perused
them in boyhood's days! Now the degenerate descendants of these once
formidable Redskins seek a living in desultory cultivation of the soil,
although bands of them and of other tribes still cause trouble to
soldiery of the Mexican Republic at times. But the capital city of
Chihuahua is an example of man rising superior to savagery and Nature,
and this splendid centre of modern life and industry is far removed
from the condition of its natural surroundings. It stands at an
elevation of nearly 5,000 feet above the level of the sea. The climate
is a healthy one, eminently suitable for the white race and its
activities; and the population of 30,000 inhabitants forms the centre
of a great growing region whose natural resources are manifold. Upon
the river Conchos, and upon the Casas Grandes, affluents of the Rio
Grande or Bravo, are some of the ruins which are amongst the oldest and
most interesting of Mexico, from an archaeological point of view.

We have said that the Mexicans are an hospitable people, and this is
eminently true of the upper class. As to the _peones_, they are, in the
more remote districts, by no means of an untractable or surly
character, although the lowest in the scale, and some of the Indian
tribes, are excessively stupid and suspicious. The Mexicans of better
class divide these people into _gente de razon_, or "rational" people,
and _gente intratable_, or people with whom it is almost impossible to
treat or to comprehend. These people vary much throughout the country,
but as a rule they are unaggressive and harmless. Whilst thieving is
generally ascribed as a strong vice of the Mexican lower class, this
must not be rashly applied. The _peon_, or Indian, may take articles of
small value which are left about, but he does not commit crime in order
to rob; and the extraordinary outrages constantly perpetrated in the
"Wild West" of the United States, in the shootings, "holding-up" of
passenger trains, wrecking of express cars by dynamite, bank robbery,
and the like exploits of the Anglo-American desperado, to steal, are
unknown to the temperament of the Spanis