to it, for they are
without the thorny briers and venomous reptiles which infest the
barbed barrenness of Mexico. The good land and cultivated spots in
Mexico are but dots on the map. Were it not that it takes so very
little to support a Mexican, and that the land which is cultivated
yields its produce with little labor, it would be surprising how
its sparse population is sustained. All the towns we have visited,
with perhaps the exception of Parras, are depopulating, as is also
the whole country.

"The people are on a par with their land. One in two hundred or
five hundred is rich, and lives like a nabob; the rest are _peons_,
or servants sold for debt, who work for their masters, and are as
subservient as the slaves of the South, and look like Indians, and,
indeed, are not more capable of self-government. One man, Jacobus
Sanchez, owns three fourths of all the land our column has passed
over in Mexico. We are told we have seen the best part of Northern
Mexico; if so, the whole of it is not worth much.

"I came to Mexico in favor of getting or taking enough of it to pay
the expenses of the war. I now doubt whether all Northern Mexico is
worth the expenses of our column of three thousand men. The
expenses of the war must be enormous; we have paid enormous prices
for every thing, much beyond the usual prices of the country."

There it is. That's all North Mexico; and New Mexico is not the better
part of it.

Sir, there is a recent traveller, not unfriendly to the United States,
if we may judge from his work, for he speaks well of us everywhere; an
Englishman, named Ruxton. He gives an account of the morals and the
manners of the population of New Mexico. And, Mr. President and
Senators, I shall take leave to introduce you to these soon to be your
respected _fellow-citizens_ of New Mexico:--

"It is remarkable that, although existing from the earliest times
of the colonization of New Mexico, a period of two centuries, in a
state of continual hostility with the numerous savage tribes of
Indians who surround their territory, and in constant insecurity of
life and property from their attacks, being also far removed from
the enervating influences of large cities, and, in their isolated
situation, entirely dependent upon their own resources, the
inhabitants are totally destitute