happen to be in a mining vicinity. In many of the provincial States, roads are primitive to a degree; and, although railway communications are perhaps the best in Latin-America and generally under the immediate superintendence of British officials and engineers, yet few Europeans succeed in comprehending the intense remoteness of many Mexican localities, their solitude and heart-breaking isolation.
All the same, many Mexican families retire to their haciendas during the summer season. This they do because they regard it as a duty, and not because they like it. No! They pine for their patios and their stately chambers which look directly on to the street. There are, of course, old families who reside upon their estates for the sufficient reason that the condition of their finances does not permit them to keep house in the capital.
Like London, Mexico city was undergoing a process of rehabilitation immediately prior to the days of the Rebuilding
Mexico.Revolution. It was, indeed, passing through a transition stage. Old buildings were in process of being scrapped, their places being taken by beautiful new edifices which, when completed, would make it one of the handsomest cities in the world. Thus the Legislative Building, a Renaissance pile, was being constructed at a cost of £1,000,000; a new Post Office was gradually arising; the War Office which was destined to supplant the old building was to cost over £100,000; and on a National Pantheon £1,000,000 was to have been lavished—all these were works of the Diaz régime, ever active, ever taking on new responsibilities. But are they finished? Do they still stand incomplete? Who can tell? The strict censorship exercised on news leaving the country renders it impossible to say. But those who have reliance in Mexican patriotism can confidently predict that it is equal to the task of the rehabilitation of the capital, backed up as it will be by the great wealth of the country when the present sorry
