or tobacco plantations, the
latter lived. By small occasional supplies of cocoa or spirit they keep
alive the indebtedness; and as they keep the accounts themselves, the
poor Indians, in their ignorance and simplicity, are ground to the
earth to support lazy and profligate masters.

We had not formed any very exalted opinion of these people, and they
did not rate themselves very high. Don Juan had told us that the
Indians were all drunkards, and half the white people; and the other
half had occasionally to take to the hammock; he said, too, that they
were all gamblers, and the alcalde, as he shuffled the cards, confirmed
it, and asked me to join them. He inquired if there was no gambling in
my country, or what people did with their money if they did not gamble,
and he allowed that to expend it in horses, carriages, dinners,
furniture, dress, and other particulars suggested by some of them, was
sensible enough; for, as he said very truly, when they died they could
not carry it away with them. I mentioned that in my country gambling
was forbidden by law, and that for gambling in the street, and on a
Sunday, they would all be taken up and punished. This touched the
alcalde in his office, and he started up with the cards in his hand,
and looking indignantly at the people under his charge, said that there
too it was forbidden by law; that any one who gambled, or who connived
at it, or who permitted it in his house, was liable to be declared not
a citizen; that they had laws, and very good ones; all knew them, but
nobody minded them. Everybody gambled, particularly in that village;
they had no money, but they gambled corn and tobacco and he pointed to
a man then crossing the plaza, who the night before had gambled away a
hog. He admitted that sometimes it was a good way to make money, but
he pointed to a miserable-looking young man, not more than two or
three-and-twenty, whose father, he said, had ranchos, and Indians, and
houses, and ready money, and was close-fisted, and had left all to that
son, who was now looking for seven and sixpence to make up a dollar,
and the young man himself, with a ghastly smile, confirmed the tale.
The alcalde then continued with a running commentary upon the idleness
and extravagance of the people in the village; they were all lazy, and
having illustrations at hand, he pointed to an Indian just passing with
three strings of beef, which, he said, had cost him a medio and a half,
and would be co