52 MEXICO. fifty, with occasional additions, when the season is late, or the work has been retarded by accidental causes. They are divided into gangs, as in the West Indies, and appeared to me to perform their several tasks with great precision, and rapidity. Fift}^ men are employed in watering the canes ; * twenty in cutting ; ten in bringing the cut canes from the field, (each with six mules ;) twenty-five, (mostly boys,) in separating the green tops, which are used as fodder, and binding up the remainder for the muleteers. Twenty men, in gangs of four each, feed the engine, day and night ; fourteen attend the boilers ; twelve keep up the fires ; four turn the cane in the sun, when the juice is expressed, and dry it for fuel ; and ten are constantly at work in the warehouse, clarifying the sugar, and removing it afterwards to the store- rooms, from whence it is sent to the market. All these labours proceed without diflliculty or compulsion, and the sound of the whip is never heard ; but whether free- dom will have the effect (as many hold here) of raising the workmen in the scale of civilization, is a question which I cannot pretend to decide. It is much to be desired, certainly, for a more debauched, ignorant, and barbarous race, than the present inhabitants of the sugar districts, it is impossible to conceive. They seem to have engrafted the wild passions of the negro upon the cunning, and suspicious character of the Indian ; and are noted for their ferocity, vindictiveness, and attachment to spirituous liquors. When not at work, they are constantly drunk ; and as they have httle or no sense of religious or moral duties, there is but a slender chance of amendment. They are, however, an active, and at intervals, a laborious race, capable of enduring great fatigue, and, appa- rently, well suited in constitution to the dangerous climate which they inhabit.
- The Spanish names, in regular succession, are, Regadores, Mache-
teros, Arrieros, Zacateros, or Atajadores, Trapicheros, Caldereros, Hor- neros, Volteadores, Alzadores, Purgadores.
