20 MEXICAN RESOURCES. 



and families for a long time with heads and livers. The cooked meat from which 

 the fat has been extracted {came de chito) lies there in complete mountains after a 

 matanza; it is bought up by dealers, and sold in the villages. 



Goats and swine are also reared in great numbers, both, also, for the sake of their 

 fat. The steep, craggy hills and mountains, covered with thorns and creeping- 

 plants, afford them a perfect paradise, where they are fattened with greater celerity 

 than in the slums of great cities. The milk either of goat or cow is not utilized to 

 any extent in Mexico ; as a consequence, butter is scarce, and cheese mostly im- 

 ported. The chief profit of goats is in the tallow, a fat he-goat yielding about 

 twelve, and a she-goat ten pounds of tallow. In Jalisco and Michoacan many estates 

 fatten a thousand swine annually, and sell them in droves to the soap-boilers and 

 ham-salters of Toluca and Perote. 



IRRIGATION. 



By the establishing of a school of agriculture, and by the encouraging of farmers 

 to procure the best breeds of cattle, etc., the " Department of Public Works," in 

 Mexico, has in mind the thorough cultivation of Mexican soil, by the best and 

 most improved processes. 



It offers some inducements to immigrants, but prefers those of the Latin race, 

 as more readily assimilating with the native population. But its attention should 

 rather be directed towards a system of irrigation, which, by a network of arteries, 

 or by means of artesian wells, should feed the vast deserted tracks with water, — 

 that life-blood of agriculture. The native Indians once possessed extensive irri- 

 gating works, but they were destroyed by the Spaniards, who, in addition to this, 

 eventually deprived the high valleys and plateaux of their forest coverings ; and 

 the soil, thus exposed to a tropical sun, without protection of undergrowth or 

 timber, was carried away by descending torrents. This is the condition of the 

 great Valley of Mexico, whose surrounding hills are almost entirely denuded of 

 soil as well as of vegetation. The great success resulting from irrigation, in Califor- 

 nia, New Mexico, and other portions of the lost territory of Mexico, should remind 

 the Mexicans of the great prestige of their ancestors, and incite them to the 

 re-building of ancient aceqiiias and canals, under the care of the State. 



"If all the country," says Seiior Cubas, "were populated, even in proportion to 

 Guanajuato, the census of the Republic would reach 58,000,000, and then agricul- 

 ural products would be so much greater that they would constitute an element 

 of enormous wealth." Within the territory, at present, there are more than 5,700 

 haciendas, and 13,800 ranches; the value of landed property, based simply on its 

 valuation for taxes, was, in 1876, ^176,397,300, without taking into account streams, 

 grazing-lands, orchards, and other rural property. 



These estimates are taken from the great government report of Mexico, — Esta- 

 distica de la Repiiblica Mexicana, — which has been the basis of the preceding 

 article, and which we have every reason to believe approximately accurate. From 

 the same source we also obtain the 



