GEOGRAPHICAL AND STATISTICAL 

 NOTES ON MEXICO. 1 



(Corrected to June 30, 1897.) 



FOR a long time past I have felt the need of a short treatise con- 

 taining geographical and statistical information about Mexico, 

 to answer the many queries received on that subject by the Mexican 

 Legation in Washington. A statistical abstract about Mexico, such as 

 most nations publish every year, is greatly needed, especially now 

 when the attention of business men and young men is awakening to the 

 possibilities of Mexico. It was partly with the purpose of supplying 

 that need that I prepared this article, which will, I hope, at least serve 



1 This article first appeared in the Bulletin of the American Geographical Society 

 of New York of December 31, 1896. A club of the City of Washington requested 

 me, in January, 1888, to deliver a lecture on Mexico, and, as I had not time to prepare 

 one, I consented to give an informal talk on the subject, which I did on January i6th 

 of that year. Most of my talk was taken down by a stenographer, and was the basis 

 of the article which appeared in the Bulletin of the American Geographical Society 

 of New York. That Society did me the honor of electing me one of its honorary 

 members, at the request of Honorable Frederick A. Conkling, on January 25, 1870, 

 and I have ever since felt that I owed it a debt which I could only pay by sending it 

 a contribution about Mexico. The pressure of my official duties in Washington on 

 the one hand, and my inability to treat properly the many subjects connected with a 

 description of Mexico, added to the difficulty of compressing them into a few pages ; 

 on the other, delayed that work much longer than I desired or expected. I have 

 added considerably to this article in the present edition, especially in that part which 

 embraces statistical information about Mexico, and I am sure that in so far as concerns 

 the fulness of that information and the most recent data, my article stands above any 

 previous publication on the subject. 



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