and lakes of the country, roads being few and agriculture in a most backward state. The population is about 90,000; and the capital, Campeché, built on the site of an older native town, is reminiscent in its fine old buildings of the prosperous times when it possessed the entire trade of Yucatan, which has now gone to Progreso, the port of Merida.
Chiapas, for the most part, still awaits development. It has a varied climate and is fertile, and its people are intelligent and peace-loving. There are Chiapas. indications of rich mineral deposits, but railway communication is, as elsewhere in Mexico, sadly lacking. The cattle trade is in a flourishing condition, and coffee is grown to great advantage in the district of Soconusco. This last-named vicinity is one of the classic countries of native lore, and it is to its people that the collector of Mexican traditions must address himself if he desires to discover a great deal that he cannot glean from the Indians of the more northerly States, for here ancient custom and folk-usage linger, and there are suspicions that in certain remote centres the ancient religion of the country is still current. In Chiapas are situated the marvellous ruins of Palenque, the most wonderful productions of aboriginal architecture on the continent of America.
Provincial Mexico is considerably older than provincial America, and is, therefore, more highly specialised in type. Local feeling and local pride are strong, and State patriotism is in some places even more powerful than national patriotism. There is, again, a very wide difference between the peoples of the North and the inhabitants of the isthmian territories; but that there is a Mexican type, a distinct Mexican people, can in no way be denied, and that this race is trending to homogeneity of ideal, if not of ethnic type, is also undoubted.
