essential accompaniment of every train, as had been the case on the "Vera Cruz Railroad" since its opening in 1873. But all this is now a matter of the past; and so impressed is the Government with the importance of keeping its railroad system safe and intact, that the Mexican Congress recently decreed instant execution, without any formal trial, to any one caught in the act of wrecking or robbing a train. That any improved methods of intercommunication between different people or countries—common roads, vessels, rail-roads, or vehicles, or the like—increase the production and exchange of commodities, is accepted as an economic axiom. But there could be no more striking and practical illustration of this law than a little recent experience on the line of the "Mexican National Railroad." The corn-crop, which is the main reliance of the people living along the present southern extension of this road for food, had for several years prior to 1885 failed by reason of drought; and, under ordinary circumstances, great suffering through starvation would inevitably have ensued. The natives, however, soon learned that with the rail-road had come a ready market, at from two and a half to three cents per pound, for the fiber known as ixtle the product of a species of agave, which grows in great abundance in the
