IV.
To turn back again to material things. An English minister has been reappointed to Mexico, and a creditable effort has been made to renew payments on the English debt. A proposed recognition of this debt by Gonzales, in '84, at the figure of $89,000,000, resulted in violent rioting. Diaz admitted it in June, '85, at $51,000,000, with other allowances that bring it up to $65,000,000. In Diaz's Plan of Tuxtepec, under which he drove from the country Lerdo—whom I saw the other day, a broken old man, living quietly at the Lenox Hotel in New York—one of the principal grievances stated was that he, Lerdo, had agreed to recognize the English debt. This oft-repudiated obligation dates in its origin from 1824, and is and always has been the principal financial incubus upon the country.
The harbor of Vera Cruz has not been improved. A French company began a breakwater there in '85, after the plans recommended to the municipality by Captain Eads, but in the following year its charter was cancelled—again on the ground of pecuniary irresponsibility. A
Mexican line of steamers was also put on from there to European ports in '84, but these were built rather for speed than freight traffic, which should have been their principal resource. The experiment proved to be badly planned, arid they were shortly after taken under the
mortgage, by the Barings of London, and withdrawn. The daily train from Vera Cruz to Mexico, by-the-way, now starts at a quarter to six in the morning, instead of
midnight as before. This arrangement gives the passenger a much better idea of his striking transition from the Tierra Caliente to the
table-lands, but does not bring him till long after dark to the approaches of the Capital, so that these must be left for his return.
