MEXICO 205 



are usually of a high percentage, averaging over 70 per cent. 

 Horses do very well, but there is little sale for them apart 

 from those required for the Mexican cavalry. Mule-breeding 

 is, however, a most lucrative business, and splendid animals 

 are obtained by using American jacks (donkeys) of from 15 

 to 16 hands put to native mares. The demand is keen for 

 mules, unbroken, three years old. 



As to the price of land, it is very varied, there being, as in 

 all countries, good, bad, and indifferent. Land that will cany 

 a bullock to 10 acres can be bought, fenced and improved, at 

 from 6/- to 7/- an acre, according to its location to railways 

 or large cities. Unimproved land of about the same carrying 

 capabilities, but further back, can be bought at from 2/- and 

 upwards, while some parts sell as low as 6d. an acre in large 

 tracts of poorer quality. Irrigable lands are much higher, 

 running from £6 to £10 an acre. 



The star of Mexico, as a meat exporter, is waxing, and it 

 promises to shine still more brightly, as among the countries 

 of the world few possess such a combination of advantages 

 for successful stock-raising and cheap meat production. About 

 three-fourths of the whole area is considered suitable only for 

 grazing and agriculture, and the bulk of it is chiefly valuable 

 for grazing. American ranchers, who have been crowded out 

 of their own country by the encroachment of settlers and the 

 handicap of the now almost prohibitive land values in the 

 United States, have realised the great field awaiting them in 

 Mexico, the richness, the vast extent, and the low cost of the 

 splendid pastures, and so it has come to pass that enterprising 

 men, with money and experience, have been migrating from 

 their own country to where they can obtain land at a fifth of 

 the price per acre that similar land would command in Texas. 



Although the quality of Mexican live-stock is at present in- 

 ferior to that produced by the United States and Canada, rapid 

 progress is being made, and there is an increasing percentage 

 of cattle suitable for export as refrigerated meat, while for the 

 tinned-meat trade there is an ample supply. When it is borne 

 in mind that Mexico is equal in area to the United Kingdom, 

 France, Germany, Spain, and Portugal, and that the greater 

 part of it can be most profitably utilised by the production of 



