of an inferior quality, but I am inclined to attribute its defects more to neglect, and to the too great abundance of the Cactus, and other thorny shrubs, in the plains where the great flocks of the Interior are fed, than to any peculiarity in the climate.
Wherever due attention is paid to the subject, and care taken to preserve the fleece from injury, the quality seems to improve, and the price rises from ten, or fourteen reals, to twenty-four, and twenty-eight reals, per Arroba. This is the case at Qŭerētărŏ, with what is termed the Lana de chinchorro, of which I shall have occasion to speak in the account of my journey into the Interior.
The total agricultural produce of Mexico, calculated by Humboldt upon the Tithes, (on a term of ten years,) with an allowance of three millions of dollars for the Cochineal, the Vanilla, Jalap, Sarsaparilla, and Tabascan pepper, which paid no tithes, and two millions more for the Sugar and Indigo, upon which the clergy only received a duty of four per cent., was found to amount to twenty-nine millions of dollars, and thus to exceed, by four millions, the annual average produce of the mines, from which the wealth of the country was supposed to be principally derived.
Of the present amount it is impossible to form any correct estimate, from the state of disorganization into which both church, and state, have been thrown by the civil war.
But the produce, under less favourable circum-
