Federal District. Payment for these lands can be made in Three per
cent. Consolidated Debt Bonds, purchased at 70 per cent. of their
nominal value and received by the Government at par.

_Colonisation_.--The conditions which the colonist in Mexico will
encounter will have been fully learned by a general perusal of these
pages. There is much room for colonists and they are welcomed. Great
care must be taken to avoid the numerous land schemes which are
continually sprung upon investors by land sharks and speculators,
principally of American nationality. A number of people have lost their
small capital through investing in ill-judged or fraudulent plantation
schemes, and as to the United States, the abuse became so marked that
the Government of that country at length declined to permit the mails
to be used by promoters of some Mexican land schemes. I have seen the
most extraordinary prospectuses, emanating from the United States,
calculating and offering systems of life assurance and annuities based
upon the yield of rubber of some tropical jungle, which they held in
Mexico. A large number of these "buccaneers" have been operating of
recent years, and _bona fide_ companies have to bear the ill-fame so
created in connection with tropical land dealings. Nevertheless, the
individual often does and may obtain success and achieve profits amid
the easy conditions and temperate climates of some of Mexico's fertile
regions. But capital is indispensable to his success, and no emigrant
should proceed there without it.

_Labour_.--With regard to native labour, there is not sufficient. The
_peon_ earns a low wage, but the demand is likely to increase this
considerably in coming years. Mexico does not prohibit the introduction
of Asiatics, but these are not a good element, and if such a policy
were continued in indiscriminately it would be a vast mistake and would
injure Mexico. The immigrants Mexico really wants are Europeans, and
their valleys and forests are better left unworked than stuffed with
the yellow race. Similar conditions may be pointed to in Peru and other
countries of Spanish-America. Mexico boasts that she is the "bridge of
the world's commerce" and that she looks towards Asia with equal favour
as towards Europe. But the importation of Asiatics will be disastrous,
and the native _peones_ are a superior race in every respect and must
rather be encouraged to multiply. As regards the labour of the white
man in the tropic