AN ECONOMIC STUDY OF MEXICO. 723 



exploration for the construction of a standard work of travel ; yet, 

 whoever reads his narrative and enters into sympathy with the author 

 (as who in reading Bayard Taylor does not ?) is heartily glad that it is 

 no longer — for Mungo Park in attempting to explore the Niger, or 

 Bruce in seeking for the sources of the Nile, or Livingstone on the 

 Zambesi, never encountered greater perils or chronicled more disagree- 

 able experiences of travel. It was not enough to have " journeyed," 

 as he expresses it, " for leagues in the burning sun, over scorched 

 hills, without water or refreshing verdure, suffering greatly from 

 thirst, until I found a little muddy water at the bottom of a hole " ; 

 to have lived on frijoles and tortillas (the latter so compounded 

 with red pepper that, it is said, neither vultures nor wolves will 

 ever touch a dead Mexican), and to have found an adequate supply of 

 even these at times very difficult to obtain ; to sleep without shelter 

 or upon the dirt floors of adobe huts, or upon scafi^olds of poles, and 

 to have even such scant luxuries impaired by the invasions of hogs, 

 menace of ferocious dogs, and by other enemies " without and within," 

 in the shape of swarms of fleas, mosquitoes, and other A^ermin ; but, 

 in addition to all this, he was robbed, and left bound and helpless in a 

 lonely valley, if not with the expectation, at least with a feeling of 

 complete indifference, on the part of his ruffianly assailants, as to 

 whether he perished by hunger and cold, or effected a chance deliver- 

 ance. And if any one were to travel to-day over the same route that 

 Bayard Taylor followed, and under the same circumstances of per- 

 sonal exposure, he would undoubtedly be subject to a like experience. 

 In August, 1878, Hon. John W. Foster, then United States min- 

 ister to Mexico, writing from the city of Mexico to the Manufacturers' 

 Association of the Northwest, at Chicago, made the following state- 

 ment concerning the social condition of the country at that time : 

 "Not a single passenger-train leaves this city (Mexico) or Vera Cruz, 

 the (then) termini of the only completed railroad in the country, with- 

 out being escorted by a company of soldiers to protect it from assault 

 and robbery. The manufacturers of this city, who own factories in 

 the valley within sight of it, in sending out money to pay the weekly 

 wages of their operatives, always accompany it with an armed guard ; 

 and it has repeatedly occurred, during the past twelve months (1878), 

 that the street railway-cars from this city to the suburban villages 

 have been seized by bands of robbers and the money of the manufact- 

 urers stolen. Every raining company which sends its metal to this 

 city to be coined or shipped abroad always accompanies it by a strong 

 guard of picked men ; and the plantei'S and others who send money 

 or valuables out of the city do likewise. The principal highways 

 over which the diligence lines pass are constantly patroled by the 

 armed rural guard or the Federal troops ; and yet highway robbery is 

 so common that it is rarely even noticed in the newspapers. One of 

 the commercial indications of the insecurity of communication between 



