Page:Appleton's Guide to Mexico.djvu/171

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WHAT MEXICO NEEDS.
143

Ward, Mexico in 1827.
Calderon de la Barca, Life in México.
Prescott, Conquest of Mexico.
Chevalier, Mexico, Ancient and Modern.
Wilson, Mexico and its Religion.
Wilson, History of the Conquest of Mexico.
Tempsky, Mitla, Adventures in Mexico, etc.
Buxton, Adventures in Mexico.
Bullock, Six Months in Mexico.
Brantz-Mayer, Mexico, as it was and as it is.
Haven, Our Next-Door Neighbor.
Lucas-Alaman, Historia de Méjico.
Zamacois, Historia de Méjico.
The New American Cyclopædia, article on Mexico.


LIV.

What Mexico needs.

That Mexico may assume an elevated rank in the family of nations, two conditions are necessary: first, the education and elevation of the mass of her population; second, the development of her unequaled natural resources.

According to an eminent American statesman and diplomatist,[1] "of the ten millions of people in Mexico, fully three quarters are Indians, two thirds of whom can not read, nor ever had an ancestor that could, who never slept in a bed or wore a stocking, and who are accustomed to live at a less expense per day than a farm-horse would cost in any New England State."

Comprising a territorial area sixteen times greater in extent than that of the State of New York, every variety of climate, and, consequently, every vegetable product

  1. The Hon. John Bigelow.