with pepper, form their main diet. The banana has been a wonderful boon to the poor of this country; four thousand pounds of bananas may be gathered from ground which yields thirty pounds of wheat. Within a year after the suckers are set out the plant is in full bearing, which means three crops in a year.
Nothing in Mexico has so fastened upon the world's attention as have its wonderful mines; between a. d. 1519 and a. d. 1826 precious metals to the value of $2,588,732,000 had been taken from them. Silver and gold were exported by the ton. At the close of the eighteenth century the famous old vita madre, or mothervein, of Guanajuato had yielded one-fifth of all the silver then in circulation in the world. Most of this treasure found its way to Spain, but vast quantities of it were hoarded up in the churches built everywhere in Mexico.
Candlesticks of gold too heavy for one man to lift, pyxes, crosses, statues, of precious metals encrusted with gems and most elaborately wrought, adorn the shrines, whose wealth of ornamentation exceeds anything known elsewhere. When the mines of St. Eulalia, near Chihuahua, were in full operation years ago, there was a tax of twelve and a half cents on every eight ounces of silver drawn from the mines, and in fifty years the proceeds had reared one of the grandest churches in Mexico. Many of the richest mines in the country—those of St. Eulalia among the number—have been closed for generations. In the eager search for "bonanzas" the owners passed by a great deal of valuable ore rather than work for it. The government has recently issued a permit to an enterprising Yankee to reopen this old mine. He has erected a mill in Chihuahua fitted up with mod-
