pect of the whole of Popocatepetl, with the sunset tinging its snows, we returned to the hacienda and took seats in the lower court, near the office where the clerk of the administrador was paying off the hands for their week's work. Here chocolate was handed us, served in the same tasteful style as our dinner.
The hands were all mustered, and came up with the usual "Alabo a Dios!" to receive their weekly wages, as on last evening at San Nicolas.
Don Felipe informs me, that all the ordinary expenses of this estate are $500 per week; but during the working season they rise frequently to $1200. Three hundred laborers are usually employed at two and a half to three reals a day, and the total production of the hacienda is about 40,000 loaves annually—the loaves averaging twenty-three pounds—or, in all, 920,000 pounds of refined sugar. Here, as elsewhere, the molasses nearly pays the expenses.
He complains greatly of the worthlessness of the Indians, and expresses hopes of improvement from the establishment of schools in Cuautla, where the young children learn rapidly, if they are allowed by their intemperate and gambling parents to continue in their classes. He alleges, that the greatest punishment for the Indians is to discharge and expel them entirely from the estate upon which they and their ancestors, from time immemorial, have worked; but he intimates that other punishments are resorted to for trifling faults and excesses, and I doubt not the whip is made to play an important part in the discipline of Mexican plantations.
Mr. Stephens, in his last work on Yucatan, gives a scene of this sort which he witnessed. "Looking into the corridor," he says, "we saw the poor Indian on his knees on the pavement, with his arms clasped around the knees of another Indian, so as to present his back fairly to the lash. At every blow he rose on one knee, and sent forth a piercing cry. He seemed struggling to retain it, but it burst forth in spite of all his efforts. His whole bearing showed the subdued character of the present Indians, and with the last stripe the expression of his face seemed that of thankfulness for not getting more. Without uttering a word, he crept to the major domo, took his hand, kissed it, and walked away. No sense of degradation crossed his mind. Indeed, so humbled is this once fierce people, that they have a proverb of their own: 'Los Indios no oyen sino por las nalgas'—the Indians only hear through their backs."
In what then is this Indian population, throughout the planting, farming and mining districts, equal to our slaves? Although not hereditary property by law, they are hereditary by custom, and the force of those circumstances which deny them the opportunity of bettering their condition, either by emigration to foreign countries, or by diffusing themselves over their own. They form a degraded caste. They are subjected to the control of masters and overseers, and although it is true that they are regularly paid for their labor and habitual degradation, yet they are ignorant, gambling, intemperate, and liable at any moment to be submitted to the lash,
