The purpose of this work is to treat of Mexico as a topographical and political entity, based upon a study of the country from travel and observation; a method such as has found favour in my book upon Peru. The method of viewing a country as a whole, with its people, topography, and general conditions in natural relation to each other, is one which commands growing acceptance in a busy age. I have been able to observe much of the actual life and character of Spanish-American countries from consi

The history of Mexico at the time of the Conquest rests upon an accurate basis; the five letters of Cortes to the Spanish Emperor, Carlos V. These have been recently retranslated into, and published in, English in two excellent volumes: The most famous book on the Conquest is that of Prescott, the American historian, and this never loses its charm, although to the traveller who knows the country it may, at times, seem somewhat highly drawn. The writers which, after Cortes, were the participators

"From what I have seen and heard concerning the similarity between this country and Spain, its fertility, its extent, its climate, and in many other features of it, it seemed to me that the most suitable name for this country would be New Spain, and thus, in the name of your Majesty, I have christened it. I humbly supplicate your Majesty to approve of this and order that it be so called." Thus wrote Hernan Cortes, the greatest natural leader of men since Julius Cæsar, to the sovereign whom he en

Mexico, that southern land lying stretched between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, upon the tapering base of North America, is a country whose name is fraught with colour and meaning. The romance of its history envelops it in an atmosphere of adventure whose charm even the prosaic years of the twentieth century have not entirely dispelled, and the magnetism of the hidden wealth of its soil still invests it with some of the attraction it held for the old Conquistadores. It was in the memorable a

Like the misty cloud-streaks of the early dawn, the beginning of the story of the strange empire of prehistoric Mexico unfolds from fable and fact as we look back upon it. We are to imagine ourselves upon the shores of Lake Texcoco, in the high valley-plateau of Anahuac, "the land amid the waters." It is the year 1300, or a little later, of the Christian era. The borders of the lake are marshy and sedgy, the surrounding plain is bare and open, and there is no vestige of man and his habitation. F

The most remarkable of the remaining monuments in stone of the peoples who successively or contemporaneously inhabited Mexico, are those well-defined and fairly well-known groups of ruins scattered at wide distances apart in the southern and south-eastern part of Mexican territory. The principal of these are: Teotihuacan, at Texcoco, in the Valley of Mexico; Cholula, in the State of Puebla; Monte Alban and Mitla, in the State of Oaxaca; Palenque, in the State of Chiapas; Uxmal and Chichen-Ytza,

Such, indeed, might have been the sentiment which inspired the breasts of Hernando Cortes and his Spaniards on that memorable Good Friday, April 21, 1519, as they first set foot upon the Mexican mainland, upon those sandy shores which in the act they christened Vera Cruz. Before them, far away beyond the sandy desert and the tree-crowned slopes, stretched a high cordillera, a curtain drawn between them and the unknown world of the interior. What lay there? Matters of grave interest and preoccupa

The Valley of Mexico is a region of somewhat remarkable topographical character. It consists of a plain or inter-montane basin, enclosed on all sides by ranges of hills, forming a hydrographic entity whose waters have no natural outlet. [15] A group of lakes occupy the central part of this valley, very much reduced, however, in size since the time of the Conquest. It was the 8th of November, 1519. Across the southern end of the great Lake Texcoco stretched a singular dyke or causeway, several mi

The history of Mexico, like its topography, shows a series of intense and varied pictures. Indeed, it ever occurs to the student of the Spanish-American past, and observer of Spanish-American hills and valleys, that the diverse physical changes seem to have had some analogy with or to have exercised some influence upon the acts of mankind there. Whether in Mexico, Peru, or other parts of North, Central, and South America, formed by the rugged ranges of the Andes, the accompaniments of prehistori

Mexico began her independent history with a monarch, a prominent figure which now stands forth in the history of the country, Iturbide—royalist, soldier-general, candidate for viceroy, insurgent chief, and Emperor by turns. Despatched at the head of the Spanish Royalist army from the capital to crush the insurgent forces under Guerrero, who maintained defiance in the south, Iturbide, after conference with the enemy, announced to his officers and army that he espoused and would support the cause

We have traced the evolution of the Mexican people through the phases of their chequered history: let us now examine more closely their habitat, the country and its physical structure, and natural clothing; its mountains and plains and accompanying vegetation, no less interesting and picturesque in their respective fields. The geographical conditions of Mexico and its geology and accompanying topography are peculiar, and indeed in some respects unique. Mexico has been termed "the bridge of the w

The Mexican people are divided for sociological or ethnological purposes into three divisions—the people of purely white European or Spanish descent, those of combined European and native races, and the pure-blooded Indians. The first have been technically termed Criollas , or Creoles, although the designation has, of recent years, been used in a different sense; the second Mestizos , or mixed race; whilst the third, the Indios , are the direct descendants of the peoples who occupied the country

Mexico is a land of numerous capital cities—far more numerous than those of any South American country. These cities are entirely distinct in type to the centres of population of Anglo-Saxon North America. Their structure, environment, atmosphere, are those of the Old World rather than the New—that is to say, if the cities of the United States and Canada are to be taken as American types. Their character is that distinct Spanish-American one ever encountered in the countries which were the main

The City of Mexico, typical as it is of Mexican people and their life, by no means embodies or monopolises the whole interest of the country, and the mere tourist who, having paid a flying visit thereto, thinks thereby to gain much idea of the nation as a whole, will naturally fall short in his observations. We must depart thence, and visit the other handsome and interesting centres of Mexico's life and population, and sojourn for a season among her people, and observe something of the "short an

The picturesque incidents of life and travel in Mexico vary much according to the particular part of the country we may be sojourning in or passing through. Civilisation has advanced more upon the great plateau, threaded by numerous railway systems, than in the less accessible regions of the Pacific and Atlantic slopes. Mexican national life has not developed much upon the littoral. A harbourless and riverless country, aboriginal civilisation made little use of its coasts, and the same natural c

There is much of interest and something of pathos and romance attending the old mines of Spanish-American countries—Mexico, Peru, and others. They are so interwoven with the history of these countries, so redolent of the past, and of the hope, despair, piety, greed of the old taskmasters who worked them, and of the generations of toiling Indian workers who spent their lives in wresting treasure from the bowels of the earth. Religion, superstition, cruelty have marked their exploitation in past a

With its remarkable variations of climatic zones and great wealth and variety of vegetation, it might have been supposed that agriculture, not mining, would have been the great mainstay of Mexico. But the fame of silver has overshadowed that of corn, wine, and oil, to the country's detriment, in a certain sense. Agriculture must be the foundation of greatness, in the long run, of any country, especially of those which are not manufacturing communities—or even of those as time goes on, and Mexico

The states described in this chapter are those which mainly occupy: (a) The mesa central , or great plateau, and (b) the states which border upon the coast of the Gulf of Mexico, and the Caribbean Sea, forming the eastern littoral of Mexico, and consequently those nearest to European influence. Taking first the plateau states, and beginning at the north, the frontier with the United States, we have the State of Chihuahua. The area of territory embodied in this state, the largest in the Republic,

The rise of Mexico, within a few years, from the position of a poor and somewhat discredited state to that of a nation with a regular budget surplus, and a credit in European markets which provides her with loans without other security than her good faith, has been very generally acclaimed as the beginning of a new era in the Spanish-American world. Previous to the year 1893 it had never happened in the history of Mexico that the nation's income exceeded its expenditure. The country had always s

The foregoing study of the Republic of Mexico shows that the country and its inhabitants embody some unique conditions. Geographically its situation is important, geologically and topographically it contains much that is remarkable; whilst, historically, the ancient civilisation which dwelt there, and the strenuous happenings upon its soil since the advent of the Europeans, mark it out specially from the rest of the American world. As to its flora and fauna , even they present a curious transiti