170 MEXICO, CENTRAL AMERICA, WEST INDIES. 



going through their drill witJi great precision, and keeping their arms in perfect 

 condition. Nobody can read or write, and the rites of the Catholic religion have 

 been forgotten, although they build cabins to which they give the name of 

 churches, and which serve as inns for wayfarers ; crosses are also set up at 

 intervals along the highways. The cacique is at once king and high priest, and 

 rules more by might than right, or until some other chief becomes strong enough 

 to seize the supreme authority in his turn. Santa Cruz, which lies on the plains 

 west of Asencion Bay, is their present capital, and this place was valiantly 

 defended against the forces sent from Merida in 1871. Bacalar, or rather 

 Bakhnlal, the " Reed Palisade," on the swampy margin of a lagoon, draining to 

 Chetumal Bay, was a Spanish settlement founded in 1544 under the name of 

 Sakimanca. Destroyed by the bucaneers in 1633, it was rebuilt and fortified in 

 1730, and even recently still carried on a brisk trade with British Honduras ; but 

 the Indian insurgents took it by surprise and massacred the whole population. 

 The remains of some of the people are still seen piled up in the old church where 

 they were slain. 



lY. — Economic and Social C£>ndition of Mexico. 



The growth of the Mexican population has not been so rapid as that of most 

 other American states. 'Ihe normal rate of increase has been greatly retarded by 

 the sanguinary war of independence, which lasted two years ; by military con- 

 spiracies and local revolutions, fomented by personal ambitions, but really due to 

 class and racial hatreds ; by the misery of the pensiintry deprived of their lands 5 

 by the depredations of the wild tribes, Ap.iches and 'Comanches on the northern, 

 Mayas on the southern frontiers ; lastly, by two foreign wars, one with the United 

 States, the other with France. Nevertheless, the population of the Union has 

 more than doubled since the beginning of the present century. In 1808, 

 Humboldt, carefully sifting all the statistical reports furnished to the admi- 

 nistration of New Spain, estimated the whole population at ô,8i7,<^00, or 

 5,767,000 for the part of the territory constituting the present Mexican republic. 

 In 1888, eighty years after Humboldt's estimate, the official census returned a 

 population of 11,396,000, which, according to the rate of annual increase, may be 

 certainly raised to 11,650,000 for 1891, this increase having been about 2 per cent, 

 during the last decade. As regards the distribution of the population, Mexico 

 differs from most other regions, the uplands being far more densely peopled than 

 the lowlands. 



Immigration, which has acquired such great economic importance in the United 

 States, in Canada and Argentina, has but a secondary influence on the growth of 

 the Mexican population and the development of its resources. It is easy to under- 

 stand whj' so few emigrants from the Old World direct their steps towards Mexico. 

 In this region the only unoccupied lands are the arid northern plains, till recently 

 exposed to the raids of marauding wild tribes, and the forest regions of the south, 

 largely under water and much dreaded by the white men for their climate. 

 Neither in Chihuahua nor in Tabasco can the European working classes hope to 



