MEXICO AND MEXICANS 



475 



fourth of whose area once belonged to 

 Mexico. It has a coast-line some 6,000 

 miles long, although its greatest length is 

 less than 2,000 miles and its greatest 

 breadth only 750 miles. Although its 

 area is only one-fourth that of Brazil, its 

 population is approximately equal to that 

 of the empire of the southern continent. 



Some 15 million souls live within its 

 borders, of whom more than two-thirds 

 can neither read nor write. 



Of the total population, only 19 per 

 cent are white, 43 per cent are of mixed 

 parentage, while 38 per cent still main- 

 tain their Indian blood uncorrupted. 

 The foreign population two years ago 

 numbered 100,000 souls, of whom 30,000 

 were Americans, 20,000 Spanish, and 

 5,000 British. 



MEXICAN AGRICULTURAL POSSIBILITIES 



The agricultural possibilities of Mex- 

 ico, despite its vast central desert plain, 

 are great. It has millions of acres of the 

 finest grazing land, great bodies of land 

 that will produce two crops of corn a 

 year, large areas of banana lands that can 

 match those of Guatemala and Costa 

 Rica, coffee lands that produce coffee not 

 only fit for the "queen's table," but used 

 on it, rubber lands, and cocao lands — all 

 lying accessible to good railroads and in 

 touch with the world's markets. 



Go to Yucatan, go to Colima, go to 

 Chiapas, go to Vera Cruz, and every- 

 where outside the great desert you will 

 find a soil teeming with possibilities. And 

 portions even of the desert land, if we 

 may judge by what we have done with 

 our own western alkali plains, may yet be 

 made to blossom when the irrigationist 

 and the plant-breeder join hands. 



The possibilities of the arid and semi- 

 arid regions of Mexico are disclosed at 

 Saltillo, on the Mexican plateau between 

 Mexico City and Laredo, Texas. The 

 traveler who journeys from the capital 

 to the frontier spends a night and a day 

 traveling over a barren region, with here 

 and there an adobe city, and with noth- 

 ing but the green of the cacti to relieve 

 the depressing brown of the desert. 

 About twenty hours out of Mexico he 

 comes to Saltillo. 



In a moment he passes from the desert 

 into a broad oasis that is wonderful for 



its vegetation and beautiful for the air 

 of prosperity and well-being that dwells 

 with it. Here land that yesterday was 

 as bare as Mother Hubbard's cup- 

 board today is laden with all the good 

 things that the vegetable kingdom af- 

 fords. A strange combination of trop- 

 ical and northern agriculture greets the 

 eye. Most of the things which grow in 

 our own western country flourish along- 

 side of the crops which grow south of the 

 Tropic of Cancer. 



A trip along the Pan-American rail- 

 road, with its magnificent forests and 

 great ancient estates, among them one on 

 which the cattle still wear the brand of 

 Cortes ; over the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, 

 where the tropical jungle rivals that of 

 the Motagua River Valley in Guatemala, 

 pronounced by Frank G. Carpenter the 

 richest in the world, and then on up 

 through the great Atlantic plain of mid- 

 dle Mexico, suggests the immense unde- 

 veloped resources of the country. 



In the middle and lower altitude belts 

 of the country the banana and the orange 

 flourish. The excellent railroad facilities 

 of Mexico give a good outlet to the ports 

 at Vera Cruz and Tampico, where ships 

 are constantly loading for European and 

 American ports. The orangeries of east- 

 ern Mexico are nearer to the eastern part 

 of the United States than are those of 

 southern California, and crop failures 

 among them are unknown. With the 

 same methods of cultivation that are pur- 

 sued in Florida and southern California, 

 they should be a source of vast wealth to 

 the country. 



THE HOME) OF CORN AND COTTON 



Although the value of the corn pro- 

 duced in Mexico each year is greater than 

 that of any other product, not even ex- 

 cepting gold or silver, the country still 

 has to import a part of its supply. The 

 reason is not far to seek — it is the nation- 

 wide love for the tortilla. There are vast 

 areas where it is easy to produce two 

 crops of corn a year and where each crop 

 grows with an exuberance that would de- 

 light the heart of any corn-club contestant 

 in the United States. 



It was my good fortune to travel 

 through the region lying between the 

 Mexican highlands and the lowlands, 



