A TRIP TO MEXICO. 293 



to expend in that country, in various ways, some thirty millions ; 

 all of which was a perfect god-send to this impoverished people. 

 Then France wanted a hand in the great poor-house, and sent 

 Maximilian there, and with him a score or more of millions. All 

 this had been gleaned up and sent away, when the English took 

 it in their heads to build that splendid railway up the mountains, 

 and poured thirty million dollars into the needy country that 

 seems no longer to give back anything. If here are not lessons 

 enough for us to let this border land of ours alone, I do not 

 know what lessons are. 



I happened to take with me as a kind of guide book, Robert 

 A. Wilson's Travels in Mexico. Now the late Judge Wilson of 

 California was the pioneer and authority of those who in late 

 years have been attempting to throw discredit on the Spanish 

 accounts of the numbers and power of the ancient Aztecs, and 

 the story of their conquest which our own Prescott has woven 

 into such a delightful romance of history. The natural mind 

 however revolts from having its cherished beliefs attacked. The 

 confirmed skeptic in history is the same unlovely being with the 

 open-mouthed skeptic in religion. Who has any sympathy with 

 the man who tried to make out that Shakspeare never existed, or 

 that old Homer was a myth ? The very thrill of joy that went 

 through the land when it was announced that the devoted and 

 intrepid Schliemann had found at Mycena an Aladin's cave of 

 Homeric heroes and treasures and evidences, ought to be a sig- 

 nificant warning to all misbelievers and belittlers of history. So 

 was I predisposed, both by the instincts of a faithful mind and 

 the love of the cherished idols of popular belief, to find all the 

 fault I could with these latter day pessimists. 



And first, in regard to the reported numbers of the ancient 

 Aztecs, which Wilson says must be taken at about one-tenth of 

 those stated, because the country could not have sustained them 

 all, I really could see no occasion to di^de them at all. It may 

 well be that in those days of the unexhausted fertility of a vol- 

 canic soil, and the easy abundance of an unvarying semi-tropical 

 climate, it may be, I say, that every Indian soul was there that 

 was numbered. It takes almost nothing to keep alive those di- 



