PREFACE.
In my opinions about Mexico I am glad to have been sanguine, because it is now seen that there was excellent ground for it. But I am glad also to have been a little sceptical, for the results have by no means equalled the highest expectations of the time of "the railway invasion." I have summed up now all the important changes since my early visit, and, as in most other human affairs, it is found that the realization is in a happy medium between the views of the extremely hopeful and of those who look always only upon the darkest side of any project.
I am not able, like several contemporaries, in whose accuracy, after all, the cynical pick flaws, to offer elaborate thanks to various notables and dignitaries "for valuable assistance in the preparation of this work," either the new edition, or the book as a whole. I wish, as a matter of interest, I could take the public into my confidence as to the number of letters written to, or interviews held with, minister resident, consul, and other persons, and the curious apathy with which these have often been met. I beg it to be believed that if there still be serious errors or omissions, they are not for want of continued and painstaking effort, which the modest result might not seem to have demanded. I may say that the book has been brought out also in England, and it has up to this time
