who depends on each year's earnings to meet each year's needs, has always got to anticipate and guard against such a possibility! There are vast tracts of land also in Mexico, especially in the northern part, where grass sufficient for moderate pasturage will grow all or nearly all the year, but on which the water-holes are so few, and so entirely disappear in the dry season, that stock can not live on them. In a report recently sent (January, 1885) to the State Department, by Warner P. Sutton, United States consul-general to Matamoros, the statement is made, that the annual value of the agricultural products of the State of South Carolina, having an area of 30,570 square miles, is at least two and half times as great as the whole like product of the six States of Northern Mexico—namely, Tamaulipas, Nuevo Leon, Coahuila, Chihuahua, Lower California, and Sonora—which have an area of 355,000 square miles, and represent about one half of the territory of the whole republic; or, making allowance for the areas of land under comparison, the annual agricultural product of South Carolina is from twenty to twenty-five times as valuable as that of the whole northern half of Mexico!
On the "tierras calientes or comparatively narrow belt of coast-lands, on both the Atlantic and Pacific sides of Mexico, there is abundance of wood and water, cheap and fertile land, and most luxuriant vegetation; but the climate is such that the white races will never live there in the capacity of laborers. When one hears, therefore, of possibilities of these regions in respect to coffee, sugar, tobacco, and a wide range of other valuable tropical products, this fact has got to be taken into account. They would, however, seem to be particularly adapted to the introduction and employment of Chinese labor; and during the past year delegations from the associated Chinese Companies of San Francisco have, it is understood, entered into negotiations with the Mexican Government, with a view of promoting an extensive immigration into these portions of the national territory.
Again, much of the best land of the plateau of Mexico is in the nature of valleys surrounded by mountains, or of strips or sections separated by deserts. Thus, for example, to get from the city of Mexico into the fertile valley of Toluca, a comparatively short distance, one has to ascend nearly three thousand feet within the first twenty-four miles; while between Chihuahua and Zacatecas there is an immense desert tract, over which the Mexican Central Railway has to transport in supply-tanks the water necessary for its locomotives. It is true that in both of these instances the natural difficulties have now in a great measure been remedied by railroad constructions; but when it is remembered that, outside of the leading cities and towns of Mexico, there are hardly any wheeled vehicles, save some huge, cumbersome carts with thick, solid, wooden wheels (a specimen of which, exhibited as a curiosity, may be seen in the National Museum at Washington); that the transportation of commodities is mainly ef-
