At Vera Cruz, the local name of which is "El Vomito" (a term doubtless originating from the continued prevalence in the town of yellow fever), the sanitary conditions are much worse than in the city of Mexico; and the causes of the evil, being mainly climatic, are probably not removable. The statistics of mortality at this place, gathered and published by the United States Department of State, are simply appalling. Thus, the population of Vera Cruz in 1869 was returned at 13492. The number of deaths occurring during the ten years ending September, 1880, was 12,219. The average duration of life in Vera Cruz for this period was, therefore, about eleven years! Other calculations indicate the average annual death-rate of this place to be about ninety per thousand, as compared with the annual average for all the leading cities of the United States for the year 1880, of 22.28 per thousand.
The writer feels that he would be guilty of a grave omission, in this connection, if he failed to quote and also to indorse the words with which the United States consul, who gathered and communicated these facts, thus concludes his official report, October, 1880: "With these awful facts before me, I leave it to the common judgment and high ideas that our law-makers have of justice to say whether or not the salary of the con-
