1892 
Salazar 
(Mexico) 
several recent robberies in that vicinity spoken of and the Prefect 
told me that two others had taken place on the Salazar Mountains the 
same day Goldman was robbed. One of the victims, a miserably poor 
old man, was in the judge*s office while I was there and said he had 
been robbed of a few little articles he had bought at market. The 
robbers had struck him on the head with a machete, cutting his scalp 
open. All of this on the main public thoroughfares between Toluca 
and the City of Mexico shows how absolutely essential to even partial 
security is the patrol guards of soldiers that are seen almost every¬ 
where. This same week, the papers in the city published an account of 
a party of armed robbers attacking some merchants on the road about 
9 miles out of the City of Mexico near Tlalpam, but the travellers 
beat off their foes by a stout resistance with their firearms. 
Although the country is in a state of safety and quiet as compared 
with its former condition, yet there are robberies going on continually 
not a tithe of which ever get to the ears of the public even here in 
the vicinity of the occurrences. The authorities are not canmunioative 
and only cases that are notorious from their boldness or other causes 
come to the notice of the public. 
As most of the foreigners live in towns or, when they travel, go 
in a way that gives but little risk of molestation, they are not aware 
of the really dangerous state of the oountry. My work; requiring resid¬ 
ence for weeks in the remoter districts and solitary hunts among the 
hills, lays the matter in a different light, and the continual warnings 
that are given me by the Prefects wherever we go of the danger a single 
person is in when going about in the oountry shows the true state of 
affairs. The authorities do all in their power to insure safety, but 
it is difficult to curb the spirit of rapine that decades of bandiHife 
has inculcated in the half savage inhabitants of Indian villages in 
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