ECONOMIC CONDITION OF MEXICO. 177 



over by the conquerors, and endowed with the qualities of mettle, strength, and 

 endurance, have also been crossed with other breeds, and a more varied choice is 

 thus daily offered to the gallant Mexican cavaliers, who are so proud of their 

 horsemanship, their gay trappings and richly-embroidered, gold-fringed costumes. 



Smaller animals, such as sheep and goats, find less favour with the stock- 

 breeders, though numerous herds of swine are reared in the forests and on the 

 plains, esj)8cially in the States of Mexico and Jalisco. 



When the Spaniards arrived in the country with their traditional theories of 

 property, they were unable to understand the communal system prevalent among 

 the natives. Montezuma himself they looked upon as a sort of ruler like their 

 own sovereign, and they concluded that the great personages of the empire were 

 feudatory vassals in the possession of vast domains. Hence they supposed that 

 they had only to substitute themselves for those Mexican lords, and Fernan 

 Cortes set the example by seizing vast territories such as the Cuernavaca district 

 and the " Oaxaca valley," with the populations inhabiting them. Nearly the 

 whole country was thus distributed amongst the conquerors, and the natives, 

 hitherto unaware that the land could be appropriated, became themselves so much 

 property, like the soil itself. Still a small plot was usually left for their use 

 within a radius of a few hundred yards round about the parish church. 



Although the Spaniards were driven out by the war of independence, the 

 system of large domains introduced, by them remained intact. The haciendas 

 are not so much farms as territorial divisions as extensive as a rural parish or even 

 a shire. As a unit of square measure the hacienda has a superficial area of 35 

 square miles, but some of the northern haciendas are a hundredfold this size, 

 covering a surface equal to one of the large departments of France. The whole 

 land between Saltillo and Zacatecas, a distance of over 180 miles, belongs to three 

 owners. These owners are naturally unable to cultivate more than a relatively 

 small part of such estates, in the heart of which they erect a fortified dwelling, 

 and around this stronghold, serving as a sort of citadel during the civil wars, are 

 grouped the houses of their clients and retainers. All h'ghways converge on the 

 seignorial mansion ; in the neighbourhood are held the markets, and all travellers 

 must call on its master either to demand hospitality or procure fresh mounts and 

 supplies. The vast enclosures in the vicinity are carefully guarded refuges, where 

 the herds are driven to escape the raids of marauding Indians or predatory ani- 

 mals. But while a solitude reigns round these isolated centres of life and industry, 

 the great hacendado^ left the country open to incursions, and it was owing to this 

 baneful system that till recently the Apaches and Comanches were able to extend 

 their daring plundering expeditions far into the interior of the republic. As was 

 remarked nearly a century ago by Humboldt — " Mexico is a land of inequality ; 

 nowhere else does there prevail a more frightful inequality in the distribution of 

 wealth." About the middle of the century the official surveys returned over 13,000 

 ranchos, or small holdings, with one "cabin " as a centre of habitation. But even 

 were they the indisputable property of the free peasantry, all these ranchos 

 constituted a scarcely perceptible portion of the national wealth. Since that 

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