rd, which lasted just
three hundred years. During this time, Rome and Spain, priest and king,
held this land and people as a joint possession. The greedy hand was
ever reached out to seize alike the product of the mine and soil. The
people were enslaved for the aggrandizement and power of a foreign
church and state. It was then that the Church of Rome fostered such a
vast army of friars, priests, and nuns, acquired those vast landed
estates, and erected such an incredible number of stone churches, great
convents, inquisitorial buildings, Jesuit colleges, and gathered such
vast stores of gold and silver. All this time the poor people were being
reduced to the utmost poverty, and every right and opportunity for
personal and civil advancement was taken from them. They were left to
grope on in intellectual darkness. They could have no commerce with
foreign nations. If they made any advance in national wealth, it was
drained away for royal and ecclesiastical tribute. Superstition reigned
under the false teachings of a corrupt priesthood, while the frightful
Inquisition, by its cruel machinery, coerced the people to an abjectness
that has scarcely had a parallel in human history. Under such a
dispensation of evil rule, Mexico became of less and less importance
among the family of nations."

This brief summary brings us to the peaceful and comparatively
prosperous condition of the republic to-day, and prepares the canvas
upon which to sketch the proposed pen pictures of this interesting
country, with which we are so intimately connected, both politically and
geographically.

CHAPTER II.

Remarkably Fertile Soil.--Valuable Native Woods.--Mexican Flora.--Coffee
and Tobacco.--Mineral Products.--Silver Mines.--Sugar Lands.--
Manufactories.--Cortez's Presents to Charles V.--Water Power.--Coal
Measures.--Railroads.--Historic Locality.--Social Characteristics.--
People divided into Castes.--Peonage.--Radical Progress.--Education
and the Priesthood.--A Threshing Machine.--Social Etiquette.--
Political Organization of the Government.--Mexico the Synonym of
Barbarism.--Production and Business Handicapped by an Excessive
Tariff.

Mexico is remarkable for the fertility and peculiar productiveness of
her soil, both of a vegetable and mineral character, though the former
is very largely dependent upon irrigation, and almost everywhere suffers
for want of intelligent treatment. As a striking proof o